THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


UNIVERSITY  of  CALIFORNIA 

A  r 

LOS  ANGELES 


THE   WOKLD   AND   THE   INDIVIDUAL 


GIFFORD  LECTURES 


THE    WORLD    AND    THE 
INDIVIDUAL 

(Ktffortr  ILectureg 
IBelibewt  fcrfore  tfje  ?Smfoetgttg  of  Sfartoeen 

FIRST  SERIES 

THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS 
OF  BEING 


BY 


JOSIAH    ROYCE,    PH.D. 

PROFESSOR  OF  THB  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY 
IN  HARVARD  UNIVERSITY 


Neto  ||ark 
THE    MACMILLAN   COMPANY 

LONDON  :    MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  LTB. 

1923 

All  right K  reserved 

93110 


COPYRIGHT,  1899, 
BY  THE  MACMILLAN   COMPANY. 


Set  up  and  electrotyped  November,  1899. 


Nortooot) 
3.  8.  Cubing  &  Co.  -  Berwick  k  Smith 
Norwood  Mui.  U-S.A. 


v,\ 

/•  ?• 


TO 

Cjjarles  ant«  f&ortense 

I   DEDICATE   THIS   BOOK 
AS  A  TOKEN  OF  BROTHERLY  AFFECTION 


PREFACE 

K        THE  Lectures  upon  which  this  volume  is  based  were 

^      delivered   before   the    University   of  Aberdeen  between 

January  11  and  February  1,  1899.      They  appear  in  a 

decidedly  more  extended  form  than  that  in  which  they 

were   delivered ;    and   they  have  been   subject   to  some 

revision.      Lecture  VII,  in   particular,  has   been  much 

^  \  lengthened    in    the    final    preparation    for    publication. 

^      These  differences  between  the  lectures  as  read  and  the 

printed  volume  have  seemed  to  me  necessary,  in  order 

^    to  complete  my  statement  of  the  problems  at  issue,  and 

14  '^  of  the  solution  that  I  offer. 

The  plan  of  the  whole   course  is   explained   more  at 

length  in  the  opening  lecture.     Lord  Gifford's  Will  calls 

upon  his  lecturers  for  a  serious  treatment  of  some  aspect 

\      of  the  problems  of   Natural   Religion.     These  problems 

i      themselves  are  of  the   most  fundamental   sort ;    and  in 

this  first  Series  I  have  not  seen  my  way  clear  to  attempt- 

~      ing  anything  less  than  a  philosophical  inquiry  into  first 

principles.      The   second    Series,   especially   in   its  later 

lectures,  will  contain   the   more   detailed   application  of 

these  first  principles  to  problems  that  directly  concern 

religion.     But  the  reader  of  the  present  lectures  will  not 

fail  to  discover  how  I  define,  in  general  terms,  God,  the 

vii 


viii  PREFACE 

World,  the  finite  Individual,  and  the  most  fundamental 
relations  that  link  them  together.  But  these,  as  I  sup- 
pose, are  the  essential  problems  of  the  Philosophy  of 
Religion. 

The  philosophy  here  set  forth  is  the  result  of  a  good 
many  years  of  reflection.  As  to  the  most  essential  argu- 
ment regarding  the  true  relations  between  our  finite  ideas 
and  the  ultimate  nature  of  things,  I  have  never  varied,  in 
spirit,  from  the  view  maintained  in  Chapter  XI  of  my 
first  book,  The  Religious  Aspect  of  Philosophy.1  That 
chapter  was  entitled  The  Possibility  of  Error,  and  was 
intended  to  show  that  the  very  conditions  which  make 
finite  error  possible  concerning  objective  truth,  can  be 
consistently  expressed  only  by  means  of  an  idealistic 
theory  of  the  Absolute,  —  a  theory  whose  outlines  I 
there  sketched.  The  argument  in  question  has  since 
been  restated,  and  set  into  relations  with  other  matters, 
without  fundamental  alteration  of  its  character,  and  in 
several  forms ; 2  once  in  my  Spirit  of  Modern  Philosophy 
(in  a  shape  intended  for  a  popular  audience,  but  with  an 
extended  discussion  of  the  historic  background  of  this 
argument) ;  again,  in  the  book  called  The  Conception  of 
G-od,  where  my  own  statement  of  the  argument  has  the 

I  Published  in  1885  at  Boston,  Mass.,  by  Houghton,  Mifflin  &  Co. 

I 1  may  here  set  down  the  titles  of  the  other  books  that  I  have  printed, 
dealing  with  philosophical  problems  :   The  Spirit  of  Modern  Philosophy 
(Boston,  Houghton,  Mifflin  &  Co.,  1892)  ;    The.  Conception  of  God  (a 
discussion  in  which    three    colleagues,   Professor    Howison,    Professor 
LeConte,  and  Professor  Mezes,  took  part  with  me,  while  I  was  kindly 
allowed,  by  the  indulgence  of  my  friends,  by  far  the  most  of  the  time 
and  the  space ;  New  York,  The  Macmillan  Co.,  1897)  ;  Studies  of  Good 
and  Evil  (a  collection  of  essays  upon  various  applications  of  idealistic 
doctrine  and  upon  related  topics  j  New  York,  Appleton  &  Co.,  1898). 


PREFACE  il 

further  advantages  of  Professor  Howison's  kindly  expo- 
sition and  keen  criticism  ;  and  still  again,  in  the  paper 
called  The  Implications  of  Self -consciousness,  published  in 
the  Studies  of  G-ood  and  Evil.  In  the  present  lectures 
this  argument  assumes  a  decidedly  new  form,  not  because 
I  am  in  the  least  disposed  to  abandon  the  validity  of  the 
former  statements,  but  because,  in  the  present  setting, 
the  whole  matter  appears  in  new  relations  to  other  philo- 
sophical problems,  and  becomes,  as  I  hope,  deepened  in 
its  significance  by  these  relations.  The  new  statement, 
indicated  already  in  the  opening  Lecture,  is  especially 
developed  in  Lecture  VII,  and  is  defended  against  objec- 
tions in  Lecture  VIII. 

While  this  central  matter  regarding  the  definition  of 
Truth,  and  of  our  relation  to  truth,  has  not  essentially 
changed  its  place  in  my  mind,  I  have  been  doing  what 
I  could,  since  my  first  book  was  written,  to  come  to  clear- 
ness as  to  the  relations  of  Idealism  to  the  special  problems 
of  human  life  and  destiny.  In  my  first  book  the  concep- 
tion of  the  Absolute  was  defined  in  such  wise  as  led  me 
then  to  prefer,  quite  deliberately,  the  use  of  the  term 
Thought  as  the  best  name  for  the  final  unity  of  the 
Absolute.  While  this  term  was  there  so  defined  as  to 
make  Thought  inclusive  of  Will  and  of  Experience,  these 
latter  terms  were  not  emphasized  prominently  enough, 
and  the  aspects  of  the  Absolute  Life  which  they  denote 
have  since  become  more  central  in  my  own  interests. 
The  present  is  a  deliberate  effort  to  bring  into  synthesis, 
more  fully  than  I  have  ever  done  before,  the  relations  of 
Knowledge  and  of  Will  in  our  conception  of  God.  The 
centre  of  the  present  discussion  is,  for  this  very  reason, 


X  PREFACE 

the  true  meaning  and  place  of  the  concept  of  Individu- 
ality, in  regard  to  which  the  present  discussion  carries 
out  a  little  more  fully  considerations  which  appear,  in  a 
very  different  form  of  statement,  in  the  Supplementary 
Essay,  published  at  the  close  of  The  Conception  of  Grod. 
As  for  the  term  Thought,  I  now  agree  that  the  inclusive 
use  which  I  gave  to  it  in  my  first  book  is  not  wholly 
convenient ;  and  in  these  lectures  I  use  this  term  Thought 
as  a  name  for  the  process  by  which  we  define  or  describe 
objects  viewed  as  beyond  or  as  other  than  the  process 
whereby  they  are  defined  or  described,  while,  in  my 
Religious  Aspect  of  Philosophy,  the  term,  as  applied  to  the 
Absolute,  referred  not  only  to  finite  processes  of  thinking, 
but  also,  and  expressly,  to  the  inclusive  Whole  of  Insight, 
in  which  both  truth  and  value  are  attained,  not  as  objects 
beyond  Thought's  ideas,  but  as  appreciated  and  immanent 
fulfilment  or  expression  of  all  the  purposes  of  finite 
Thought.  This  usage  seems  to  be  less  effective  for  pur- 
poses of  exposition  than  that  which  I  have  tried  to  em- 
ploy in  this  book.  Besides,  I  now  more  emphasize  the 
distinctions  there  already  implied,  while  I  surrender  in 
no  whit  my  assurance  of  the  unity  of  God  and  the 
World. 

As  for  the  present  discussion,  it  is  useless  to  defend 
its  methods  to  people  who  by  nature  or  by  training  are 
opposed  to  all  thoroughgoing  philosophical  inquiry.  Such 
are  nowadays  accustomed  to  say  that  they  are  already 
well  aware  of  the  limits  of  human  thinking,  and  that  they 
confine  themselves  wholly  to  "the  realm  of  experience." 
It  is  useless  to  tell  them  that  this  book  also  is  an  inquiry 
regarding  just  this  realm  of  experience.  For  such  critics, 


PREFACE  xi 

after  a  fashion  not  unknown  amongst  people  who  think 
themselves  to  be  "  pure  "  empiricists,  will  of  course  know, 
quite  a  priori  and  absolutely,  that  there  is  nothing  abso- 
lute to  be  known.  Not  for  such  critics,  who  may  be  left 
where  God  has  placed  them,  but  for  still  open-hearted 
inquirers,  I  may  as  well  say,  however,  that,  to  my  mind, 
the  only  demonstrable  truths  of  an  ultimate  philosophy 
relate  to  the  constitution  of  the  actual  realm  of  Experi- 
ence, and  to  so  much  only  about  the  constitution  of  this 
realm  as  cannot  be  denied  without  self-contradiction. 
Whenever,  in  dealing  with  Experience,  we  try  to  find  out 
what,  on  the  whole,  it  is  and  means,  we  philosophize. 
Our  goal  is  reached,  so  far  as  the  demonstrable  truth  is 
concerned,  whenever  we  have  found  a  series  of  proposi- 
tions relating  to  the  constitution  of  the  realm  of  expe- 
rience, and  such  that,  as  soon  as  you  try  to  deny  these 
propositions,  you  implicitly  reaffirm  them  by  your  very 
attempt  at  denial.  After  you  have  found  these  propo- 
sitions, you  have,  of  course,  a  right  to  use  them,  more  or 
less  effectively,  as  a  partial  basis  for  special  applications 
and  results  which  will  indeed  remain,  like  all  our  human 
knowledge  of  particulars,  more  or  less  hypothetical.  But 
your  hypotheses  about  particular  problems  must  be 
judged  by  themselves.  Your  body  of  central  truth  is 
subject  only  to  the  test  just  mentioned.  And  you  call 
this  truth  "absolute"  merely  because  you  conceive  that 
it  bears  this  test.  Whether  it  does  so  is  a  question  of 
fact,  not  of  authority.  And  every  man  must,  in  such  a 
matter,  look  for  himself  before  judging  about  what  is 
offered  to  him. 

As  to  the  principal  special  features  of  this  discussion, 


xii  PREFACE 

they  are  :  (1)  The  definition  and  comparison  of  what 
I  have  called  the  Four  Historical  Concepts  of  Being.  I 
believe  this  aspect  of  these  lectures  to  be,  in  many  re- 
spects, a  novelty  in  discussion.  (2)  The  form  here  given 
to  the  criticism  of  Realism  in  the  Third  Lecture.  (3)  The 
use  made  of  the  parallelism  between  the  realistic  and  the 
mystical  concepts  of  Being  in  the  Fourth  and  Fifth  Lec- 
tures. (4)  The  transition,  in  the  Sixth  and  Seventh 
Lectures,  from  the  concept  of  the  Real  as  the  Valid  to 
that  concrete  conception  of  Being  which,  to  my  mind, 
constitutes  Idealism.  (5)  The  statement  of  the  finite 
contrast  and  the  final  unity  of  the  External  and  Internal 
Meaning  of  Ideas.  (6)  The  concept  of  Individuality 
which  is  expounded  in  the  Seventh  and  in  the  later 
lectures,  and  the  reconciliation  of  the  One  and  the  Many 
proposed  here  and  in  my  Supplementary  Essay. 

This  Supplementary  Essay  itself,  which  my  publisher 
has  very  self-sacrificingly  allowed  me  to  add  to  the  pres- 
ent volume,  contains  my  defence  against  the  objections 
which  Mr.  Bradley's  Appearance  and  Reality  seems  to 
render  so  serious  as  obstacles  in  the  way  of  any  such 
account  as  mine  of  our  concrete  relations  to  the  Absolute. 
My  defence  is  itself  but  a  very  poor  expression  of  the 
very  deep  and  positive  obligations  which  I  owe  to  Mr. 
Bradley's  book,  —  a  book  without  which  much  of  what 
appears  in  my  Lectures  themselves  could  never  have 
received  anything  like  the  present  form.  As  a  part  of 
this  defence,  I  have  been  led  into  a  discussion  of  the 
concept  of  the  quantitative  Infinite ;  and  in  this  portion 
of  my  investigation  my  obligations  are  indeed  numerous, 
and  are,  in  part,  recognized  in  the  notes  to  the  Supple- 


PREFACE 

mentary  Essay.  In  particular,  however,  I  have  now  to 
mention  what  there  can  only  appear  in  a  very  inadequate 
fashion,  viz.  my  special  obligation  to  Mr.  Charles  Peirce, 
not  only  for  the  stimulus  gained  from  his  various  pub- 
lished comments  and  discussions  bearing  upon  the  concept 
of  the  Infinite,  but  for  the  guidance  and  the  suggestions 
due  to  some  unpublished  lectures  of  his  which  I  had  the 
good  fortune  to  hear.  I  need  not  say  that  I  do  not 
intend,  by  this  acknowledgment,  to  make  him  appear 
responsible  for  my  particular  opinions.  My  own  present 
study  of  the  concept  of  the  Infinite  may  be  justified  by 
its  effort  to  bring  into  connection  a  number  of  appar- 
ently unrelated  tendencies  of  recent  discussion,  and  to 
review  the  whole  issue  in  the  light  of  my  own  concep- 
tion of  what  constitutes  an  Individual.  The  result,  as  I 
hope,  may  serve  to  justify  some  of  the  essential  bases  of 
my  thesis  as  to  the  relations  of  God  and  Man. 

I  regret  that  Professor  Ladd's  Theory  of  Reality  ap- 
peared too  late  for  me  to  take  account  of  this  important 
contribution  to  the  problems  of  the  present  volume. 

My  thanks  are  due  to  my  colleague,  Professor  Charles 
R.  Lanman,  for  his  translations  of  the  passages  from  the 
Upanishads  which  appear  in  the  lecture  on  Mysticism.  I 
have  also  to  thank  my  other  colleagues,  Professor  Maxim  e 
Bocher  and  Professor  William  F.  Osgood,  for  kind  sug- 
gestions as  to  the  remarks  concerning  specifically  mathe- 
matical topics  in  the  Supplementary  Essay  and  in  the 
lectures  on  Validity.  And  my  especial  thanks  also  are 
owed  to  my  wife,  for  invaluable  aid  in  preparing  my 
lectures  for  publication.  That,  after  all,  quite  apart 
from  the  problematic  issues  discussed,  plain  errors  doubt- 


xiv  PREFACE 

less  remain  visible  in  text  and  in  matters  of  fact,  is  some- 
thing for  which  I  alone  am  responsible.  An  index  to 
both  series  of  lectures  is  intended  to  accompany  the 
Second  Series,  which  will  probably  appear  within  a 
year. 

CAMBRIDGE,  MASSACHUSETTS, 
October  30,  1899. 


CONTENTS 

LECTURE  I 

PAOB 

INTRODUCTION  :  THE  RELIGIOUS  PROBLEMS  AND  THE  THEORY 

OF  BEING 3 

LECTURE  II 
REALISM  AND  MYSTICISM  IN  THE  HISTORY  OF  THOUGHT      .      47 

LECTURE  in 

THE  INDEPENDENT  BEINGS  :  A  CRITICAL  EXAMINATION  OF 

REALISM         .        .        . 91 

LECTURE   IV 
THE  UNITY  OF  BEING,  AND  THE  MYSTICAL  INTERPRETATION    141 

LECTURE  V 

THE  OUTCOME  OF  MYSTICISM,  AND  THE  WORLD  OF  MODERN 

CRITICAL  RATIONALISM 185 

LECTURE  VI 
VALIDITY  AND  EXPERIENCE 225 

LECTURE  VII 
THE  INTERNAL  AND  EXTERNAL  MEANING  OF  IDEAS       .        .    265 

LECTURE  VIII 
THE  FOURTH  CONCEPTION  OF  BEING 345 

XT 


xvi  CONTENTS 

LECTURE  IX 

PAOB 

UNIVERSALITY  AND  UNITY 385 

LECTURE  X 
INDIVIDUALITY  AND  FREEDOM   .  ,    431 


SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY  :   THE   ONE,   THE  MANY,  AND  THE 

INFINITE         ....        .  ; 471 

SECTION  I.    Mr.  Bradley's  Problem 473 

SECTION  II.    The  One  and  the  Many  within  the  Realm  of 

Thought  or  of  Internal  Meanings 489 

SECTION  III.    Theory  of  the  Sources  and  Consequences  of  Any 

Recurrent  Operation  of  Thought 501 

SECTION  IV.    Infinity,  Determinateness,  and  Individuality       .    554 


LECTUKE   I 


THE  WOELD  AND  THE  INDIVIDUAL 


FIRST  SERIES:   THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CON- 
CEPTIONS OF  BEING 

LECTURE   I 

INTRODUCTION:  THE  RELIGIOUS  PROBLEMS  AND  THE 
THEORY  OF  BEING 

IN  the  literature  of  Natural  Religion  at  least  three 
different  conceptions  of  the  subject  are  represented.  The 
first  of  these  conceptions  regards  Natural  Religion  as  a 
search  for  what  a  well-known  phrase  has  called  "  the  way 
through  Nature  to  God."  If  we  accept  this  conception, 
we  begin  by  recognizing  both  the  existence  of  the 
physical  world  and  the  validity  of  the  ordinary  methods 
and  conceptions  of  the  special  sciences  of  nature.  We 
undertake  to  investigate  what  light,  if  any,  the  broader 
generalizations  of  natural  science,  when  once  accepted 
as  statements  about  external  reality,  throw  upon  the 
problems  of  religion.  It  belongs,  for  instance,  to  this 
sort  of  inquiry  to  ask :  What  countenance  does  the 
present  state  of  science  give  to  the  traditional  argument 
from  Design  ? 

The  second  of  our  three  conceptions  views  Religion 
less  as  a  doctrine  to  be  proved  or  disproved  through  a 
study  of  the  external  world  than  as  a  kind  of  conscious- 
ness whose  justification  lies  in  its  rank  amongst  the 

3 


4     THE   FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

various  inner  manifestations  of  our  human  nature.  Man, 
so  this  conception  holds,  is  essentially  a  religious  being. 
He  has  religion  because  his  own  inmost  nature  craves  it. 
If  you  wish,  then,  to  justify  religion,  or  even  to  compre- 
hend it,  you  must  view  it,  not  as  a  theory  to  be  proved 
or  disproved  by  an  appeal  to  external  reality,  but  rather 
as  a  faith  to  be  estimated  through  reference  to  the  inner 
consciousness  of  those  who  need,  who  create,  and  who 
enjoy  religion.  From  this  point  of  view  the  study  of 
Natural  Religion  concerns  itself  less  with  proof  than  with 
confession,  with  a  taxing  of  interior  values,  and  with  a 
description  of  the  religious  experience  of  mankind.  A 
somewhat  extended  interpretation  of  this  point  of  view 
treats  the  purely  historical  study  of  the  various  religions 
of  mankind  as  a  contribution  to  our  comprehension  of 
Natural  Religion. 

But  a  third  conception  of  the  study  of  Natural  Relig- 
ion remains.  This  third  view  identifies  the  doctrine 
in  question  with  the  fundamental  Philosophy  of  Relig- 
ion. It  is  the  Nature  of  Things,  viewed  in  the  light 
of  the  most  critical  examination  of  our  reason,  that 
is  now  the  object  of  an  inquiry  into  Natural  Religion. 
The  problems  at  issue  are,  for  this  view,  those  of  Aris- 
totle's Metaphysics,  of  Fichte's  Wissenschaftslehre,  of 
Hegel's  Logik,  —  of  all  the  undertakings  that,  in  the 
history  of  thought,  have  most  directly  attempted  the 
contemplation  of  Being  as  Being.  For  our  first  concep- 
tion the  student  of  Natural  Religion,  having  accepted 
the  natural  knowledge  of  his  time  as  valid,  and  not 
having  attempted  to  delve  beneath  the  foundations  of 
that  knowledge,  seeks  to  interpret  external  nature  in 


INTRODUCTION:  THE  RELIGIOUS  PROBLEMS         5 

the  light  of  religious  interests.  For  our  second  concep- 
tion Natural  Religion  is  viewed  simply  as  the  voice  of 
human  nature  itself,  whose  faith  is  to  be  expressed,  whose 
ideals  are  to  be  recorded,  whose  will  and  whose  needs  are 
to  be,  above  all,  consulted  and  portrayed,  since,  for  this 
view,  the  consciousness  of  those  who  believe  in  religious 
truth  is,  when  once  made  articulate,  its  own  apology. 
But,  for  our  third  conception,  the  office  of  the  student  of 
Natural  Religion  is  to  deal  with  the  most  fundamental 
metaphysical  problems.  He  is  for  this  view  a  thorough- 
going critic  of  the  foundations  of  our  faith,  and  of  the 
means  of  our  insight  into  the  true  nature  of  Reality. 

All  these  three  conceptions,  however  much  they  may 
differ,  have  in  common  what  makes  it  proper  enough  to 
view  them  as  conceptions  of  the  study  of  Natural  Relig- 
ion. For  they  are  all  three  concerned  with  religion ; 
they  can  all  alike  be  pursued  without  explicit  dependence 
upon  any  creed  as  to  a  revealed  religion;  and  finally, 
they  are  busied  about  some  relation  between  the  natural 
order  of  truth  and  the  contents  of  religious  doctrine. 
They  differ  in  the  sort  of  natural  truth  that  forms  their 
starting-point,  or  that  limits  the  scope  of  the  investiga- 
tion which  they  propose.  I  suppose  that  no  one  of  these 
various  lines  of  inquiry  will  ever  come  to  be  wholly 
neglected.  But  their  office  is  distinct.  And  I  mention 
them  here  in  order  all  the  more  clearly  to  say,  at  the 
outset,  that  our  own  business,  in  these  lectures,  is  with 
the  most  neglected  and  arduous  of  the  methods  of 
studying  the  relations  between  religion  and  the  ultimate 
problems  of  the  Theory  of  Being.  From  the  first,  to  be 
sure,  we  shall  be  concerned,  in  one  sense,  with  human 


6     THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

nature,  as  every  philosophy  has  to  be  concerned.  And  in 
the  latter  half  of  this  course  the  Philosophy  of  Nature 
will  play  a  part  in  our  investigation.  But  the  central 
problem  of  our  discussion  will  be  the  question :  What  is 
Reality  ? 


In  thus  stating,  in  the  opening  words,  the  plan  of  these 
lectures,  I  do  so  with  a  full  sense  of  the  shadow  that  such 
a  programme  may,  at  the  first  glimpse,  seem  to  cast  upon 
the  prospects  of  our  whole  undertaking.  It  is  true  that, 
in  calling  the  fundamental  problems  of  the  Metaphysic  of 
Religion  relatively  neglected,  I  do  not  fail  to  recognize 
that  they  are  both  ancient  and  celebrated,  and  that  some 
of  us  may  think  them  even  hackneyed.  It  is  certainly 
not  uncommon  to  call  them  antiquated.  But  what  I 
have  meant  by  the  phrase  "  relatively  neglected  "  is  that, 
compared  with  the  more  easily  accessible  fashions  of  deal- 
ing with  Natural  Religion,  the  strictly  metaphysical 
treatment  less  frequently  involves  that  sort  of  ardent 
hand-to-hand  struggle  with  the  genuine  issues  themselves 
that  goes  on  when  men  are  hopefully  interested  in  a  study 
for  its  own  sake.  It  is  one  thing  to  expound,  or  even  to 
assail,  the  theology  of  Hegel  or  of  St.  Thomas,  or  to  re- 
port any  of  those  various  quaint  opinions  of  philosophers 
in  which  even  the  popular  mind  often  delights.  It  is 
another  thing  to  grapple  with  the  issues  of  life  for  one's 
self.  The  wiser  religions  have  always  told  us  that  we 
cannot  be  saved  through  the  piety  of  our  neighbors,  but 
have  to  work  out  our  own  salvation  with  fear  and  trem- 
bling. Well,  just  so  the  theoretical  student  of  Natural 


INTRODUCTION:  THE  RELIGIOUS  PROBLEMS         T 

Religion  has  to  learn  that  he  cannot  comprehend  ultimate 
philosophical  truth  merely  by  reading  the  reports  of  other 
people's  reasonings,  but  must  do  his  thinking  for  himself, 
not  indeed  without  due  instruction,  but  certainly  without 
depending  wholly  upon  his  text-books.  And  if  this  be 
true,  then  the  final  issues  of  religious  philosophy  may  be 
said  to  be  relatively  neglected,  so  long  as  students  are  not 
constantly  afresh  grappling  with  the  ancient  problems, 
and  giving  them  renderings  due  to  direct  personal  contact 
with  their  intricacies.  It  is  not  a  question  of  any  needed 
originality  of  opinion,  but  it  is  rather  a  matter  of  our 
individual  intimacy  with  these  issues. 

And  now,  in  recognizing  the  fact  of  the  comparative 
neglect  of  the  Theory  of  Being  in  the  discussions  of 
Natural  Religion,  I  recognize  also  the  motives  that  tend 
to  make  such  an  inquiry  seem,  at  the  first  glimpse,  un- 
promising. These  motives  may  be  expressed  in  the  forms 
of  three  objections,  namely,  first,  that  si^ch  undertakings 
are  pretentious,  by  reason  of  the  dignity  and  the  mystery 
of  the  topic ;  secondly,  that  they  are1  dreary,  by  reason  of 
the  subtle  distinctions  and  the  airy  abstractions  involved 
in  every  such  research ;  and  thirdly,  that  they  are  op- 
posed, in  spirit,  to  the  sort  of  study  for  which  in  our  day 
the  sciences  of  experience  have  given  the  only  worthy 
model. 

Such  objections  are  as  inevitable  as  they  are,  to  lovers 
of  philosophy,  harmless.  Philosophy  necessarily  involves 
a  good  deal  of  courage ;  but  so  does  life  in  general.  It  is 
pretentious  to  wrestle  with  angels  ;  but  there  are  some 
blessings  that  you  cannot  win  in  any  other  way.  Philos- 
ophy is  an  old  affair  in  human  history ;  but  that  does 


8     THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

not  make  the  effort  at  individuality  in  one's  fashion  of 
thinking  a  less  worthy  ideal  for  every  new  mind.  As  to 
the  dreariness  of  metaphysics,  it  is  always  the  case,  both 
in  religion,  and  in  thinking  about  religion,  that,  just  as 
the  letter  killeth,  and  the  spirit  giveth  life,  so  the  mere 
report  of  tradition  is  dreary,  but  the  inward  life  of  think- 
ing for  one's  self  the  meaning  within  or  behind  the  tradi- 
tion constitutes  the  very  coming  of  the  Spirit  of  Truth 
himself  into  our  own  spirits  ;  and  that  coming  of  the 
Spirit,  in  so  far  as  it  occurs  at  all,  never  seems  to  any  of 
us  dreary.  As  for  the  fine-drawn  distinctions  and  airy 
abstractions,  no  distinction  is  ever  too  subtle  for  you,  at 
the  moment  when  it  occurs  to  you  to  make  that  distinc- 
tion for  yourself,  and  not  merely  to  hear  that  somebody 
else  has  made  it.  And  no  abstraction  seems  to  you  too 
airy  in  the  hour  when  you  rise  upon  your  own  wings  to 
the  region  where  just  that  abstraction  happens  to  be  an 
element  in  the  concrete  fulness  of  your  thoughtful  life. 
Now  it  chances  to  be  a  truth  of  metaphysics,  as  it  is  an 
experience  of  religion,  that  just  when  you  are  most  indi- 
vidual, most  alone,  as  it  were,  in  your  personal  thinking, 
about  ultimate  and  divine  matters,  you  are  most  com- 
pletely one  with  that  universal  Spirit  of  Truth  of  which 
we  just  spoke.  It  is  then  your  personal  process  of  think- 
ing that  both  gives  interest  to  the  subject  and  secures 
your  relation  to  the  Reality.  Hence  not  the  universality 
nor  yet  the  ultimate  character  of  the  principles  of  which 
we  think,  but  rather  our  own  sluggishness  in  thinking,  is 
responsible  for  the  supposed  dreariness  of  the  Theory  of 
Being.  As  Aristotle  observed,  that  Theory  itself  is  what 
all  men  most  desire.  You  may  in  these  regions  either 


INTRODUCTION:   THE   RELIGIOUS  PROBLEMS         9 

think  or  not  think  the  truth ;  but  you  cannot  think  the 
truth  without  loving  it;  and  the  dreariness  which  men 
often  impute  to  Metaphysics,  is  merely  the  dreariness  of 
not  understanding  the  subject,  —  a  sort  of  dreariness  for 
which  indeed  there  is  no  help  except  learning  to  under- 
stand. In  fact,  nobody  can  ever  regret  seeing  ultimate 
truth.  That  we  shall  hereafter  find  to  be,  so  to  speak, 
one  of  the  immediate  implications  of  our  very  definition 
of  Being.  When  people  complain  of  philosophy  as  a 
dreary  enterprise,  they  are  then  merely  complaining  of 
their  own  lack  of  philosophical  insight.  The  lover  of 
philosophy  can  only  offer  them  his  sincerest  agreement, 
and  sympathy,  so  far  as  concerns  the  ground  of  their  own 
complaint.  He  too  shares  their  complaint,  for  he  is 
human,  and  finds  his  own  unwisdom  dreary.  But  he  is  at 
least  looking  lovingly  toward  yonder  shining  light,  while 
they  walk  wearily  with  their  backs  to  the  Celestial  City. 

As  to  the  supposed  opposition  between  the  methods 
of  philosophy  and  those  of  the  special  sciences  of  experi- 
ence,—  it  exists,  but  it  does  not  mean  any  real  oppo- 
sition of  spirit.  Here  are  two  ways  of  getting  insight, 
not  two  opposed  creeds.  The  very  wealth  and  the 
growth  of  modern  empirical  research  furnish  especially 
strong  reasons  for  supposing  that  the  time  is  near 
when  the  central  problems  of  the  Theory  of  Being  shall 
be  ready  for  restatement.  Our  life  does  not  grow  long 
and  healthily  in  one  region,  without  being  ready  for 
new  growth  in  other  regions.  The  indirect  influence 
of  special  science  upon  philosophy  is  sure,  but  does  not 
always  mean  a  logical  dependence  of  philosophy  upon 
the  empirical  results  of  science.  Just  so,  pure  mathe- 


10     THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

matical  science  has  no  logical  dependence  upon  physics. 
Yet  we  have  all  heard  how  largely  physical  science  has 
influenced  the  lines  of  investigation  followed  by  the 
modern  mathematicians.  Within  the  mathematical  realm 
itself,  pure  Algebra,  when  once  abstractly  denned,  is  not 
logically  dependent  upon  Geometry  for  its  principles  or 
for  its  theories,  yet  some  theories  of  modern  Algebra 
have  actually  developed  largely  under  the  spell,  as  it 
were,  of  ideas  of  an  unquestionable  geometrical  origin. 
Now  a  similar  relation,  I  think,  will  in  future  find  the 
development  of  pure  Philosophy,  and  in  particular  of 
Rational  Theology,  to  the  progress  of  the  special  sci- 
ences, both  mathematical  and  empirical.  I  do  not 
think  it  right  to  regard  philosophy  merely  as  a  com- 
pendium of  the  results  of  special  science.  Philosophy 
has  its  own  field.  But  on  the  other  hand,  to  reflect 
upon  the  meaning  of  life  and  of  science  (and  in  such 
thorough-going  Reflection  philosophy  consists),  is  a  pro- 
cess whose  seriousness  and  wealth  must  grow  as  our 
human  life  and  science  progress.  And  hence  every 
great  new  advance  of  science  demands  a  fresh  consid- 
eration of  philosophic  issues,  and  will  insure  in  the 
end  a  power  to  grasp,  more  critically  and  more  deeply, 
the  central  problem  of  Being  itself.  Hence  the  more 
we  possess  of  special  science,  the  more  hope  we  ought 
to  have  for  pure  Philosophy. 

II 

So  much   then   for   the   most   general    definition    and 
justification  of   the    proposed    scope   of    these    lectures. 


INTRODUCTION:   THE  RELIGIOUS  PROBLEMS       11 

I  cannot  forbear  to  point  out  the  easily  recognizable 
fact  that,  in  thus  denning  the  plan  before  us,  I  have 
merely  tried  to  adhere,  so  far  as  I  can,  to  the  pro- 
gramme explicitly  laid  down  by  Lord  Gifford.  A  study 
of  religion  is  required  of  your  lecturer,  and  Lord  Gif- 
ford, as  appears  from  the  words  of  his  Will,  would 
himself  have  thought,  above  all,  of  studying  religion 
not  only  as  a  matter  of  purely  natural  and  rational 
knowledge,  but  primarily  as  a  body  of  Ontological 
problems  and  opinions,  in  other  words  as,  in  its  theory, 
a  branch  of  the  Theory  of  Being.  It  is  of  "  God,  the 
only  Substance,"  that  your  lecturer,  if  his  Ontology  so 
far  agrees  with  Lord  Gifford's,  will  principally  speak. 
Well  then,  I  can  best  work  in  the  spirit  of  Lord  Gif- 
ford's requirements  if  I  explicitly  devote  our  principal 
attention  to  the  ultimate  problems  of  Ontology,  laying 
due  stress  upon  their  relations  to  Religion. 

And  now  let  me  venture  to  sketch,  in  outline,  the 
particular  discussions  by  which  I  propose  to  contribute 
my  fragment  towards  a  study  of  the  inexhaustible  prob- 
lems propounded  by  Lord  Gifford's  Will.  Programmes 
in  philosophy,  as  Hegel  used  to  say,  mean  far  less 
than  in  other  enterprises.  But  even  here  some  sort  of 
programme  is  needed  to  fix  in  advance  our  attention. 

My  precise  undertaking  then,  in  the  following  lec- 
tures, is  to  show  what  we  mean  by  Being  in  general, 
and  by  the  special  sorts  of  Reality  that  we  attribute  to 
God,  to  the  World,  and  to  the  Human  Individual. 
These  I  regard  as  the  problems  of  the  ontology  of  relig- 
ion. In  every  step  of  this  undertaking  I  shall  actu- 
ally be,  in  a  psychological  and  in  an  historical  sense, 


12    THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

dependent,  both  for  my  ideas  and  for  their  organiza- 
tion, upon  this  or  that  philosophical  or  theological  tra- 
dition (well  known  to  every  student  of  philosophy); 
and  therefore  I  must  early  introduce  into  my  work 
a  sketch  of  certain  philosophical  traditions  in  which  we 
are  to  be  especially  interested.  Here,  of  course,  you 
might  expect  to  find,  as  such  an  historical  introduction 
to  our  later  critical  enterprises,  either  a  summary  of 
the  history  of  the  principal  religious  ideas,  or  some 
account  of  the  technical  history  of  the  Philosophy  of 
Religion  itself.  Yet  for  neither  of  these  two  very 
natural  enterprises  shall  I  have  time.  My  very  frag- 
mentary historical  discussions  will  be  limited  to  an 
attempt  to  depict  some  of  the  principal  conceptions 
concerning  the  ultimate  nature  of  Being,  in  other 
words  to  sketch  the  history  of  what  one  might  call 
the  ontological  predicate  of  the  expression  to  be,  or  to 
be  real,  used  as  a  means  of  asserting  that  something 
exists.  I  shall  dwell  upon  the  nature  of  Being,  because 
to  assert  that  God  is,  or  that  the  World  is,  or  even,  with 
Descartes,  that  I  am,  implies  that  one  knows  what  it 
is  to  be,  or  in  other  words,  what  the  so-called  existen- 
tial predicate  itself  involves.  Now  it  is  true  that  the 
existential  predicate,  the  word  is  used  to  assert  the 
real  Being  of  any  object,  is  often  viewed  as  something 
of  an  absolutely  simple,  ultimate,  and  indescribable 
meaning.  Yet  even  if  this  view  were  sound,  the  ulti- 
mate and  the  simple  are,  in  philosophy,  as  truly  and 
as  much  topics  for  reflective  study  as  are  the  most 
complex  and  derived  ideas  of  our  minds.  Moreover,  a 
great  deal  of  popular  religion  seems  to  involve  the 


INTRODUCTION:  THE  RELIGIOUS  PROBLEMS       13 

notion  that  it  is  both  easier  and  more  important  to  know 
that  God  is,  than  to  know,  with  any  sort  of  articula- 
tion, What  God  is,  so  that  if  you  express  even  a  total 
ignorance  of  the  Divine  nature  and  attribute,  there  are 
some  very  traditionally  minded  people  who  will  hardly 
dare  to  disagree  with  you,  while  if  you  express  the 
least  doubt  of  the  assertion  that  God  is,  the  same  peo- 
ple will  at  once  view  you  with  horror  as  an  atheist. 
Now  this  preference  in  much  popular  religious  think- 
ing for  the  ontological  predicate  in  its  purity  is  not  an 
altogether  rational  preference.  Yet  we  shall  find  that 
it  is  based  upon  very  deep  and  even  very  worthy,  if 
vague,  instincts.  It  is  true  that  if  I  pretend  to  know 
no  attributes  whatever,  characterizing  a  given  object  X, 
I  seem  to  have  won  very  little  by  believing  that  X 
nevertheless  exists.  Yet  the  fondness  for  the  Unknowable 
in  theology  has  been  to  some  extent  supported  by  the 
dim  feeling  that  even  in  asserting  the  bare  existence  of 
a  being,  and  especially  of  God,  I  am  already  committed 
to  extremely  important  attributes,  whose  definition,  even 
if  not  yet  overt,  is  already,  however  darkly,  implied  in 
my  abstract  statement.  It  is  interesting,  therefore,  to 
study  historically  what  men  have  supposed  themselves 
to  mean  by  the  ontological  predicate. 

The  basis  having  been  thus  laid  in  the  history  of  the 
subject,  our  lectures,  at  various  points  in  the  historical 
summary,  will  have  at  some  length  to  undertake  a  critical 
comparison  and  analysis  of  the  various  meanings  of  the 
ontological  predicate.  Such  an  analysis  will  constantly 
show  us  unexpected  connections  of  these  meanings  with 
the  concrete  interests  of  religion.  We  shall  find  it  with 


14     THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

ontology,  as  it  certainly  is  with  ethics.  People  often  re- 
gard moral  philosophy  as  a  topic  very  abstract  and  dry. 
And  yet  wherever  two  or  three  are  gathered  together  in- 
dulging in  gossip  about  the  doings  of  their  neighbors, 
their  speech,  even  if  it  involves  out-and-out  scandal,  is 
devoted  to  a  more  or  less  critical  discussion,  to  an  illus- 
tration, and  even  to  a  sort  of  analysis  of  what  are  really 
very  deep  ethical  problems,  —  problems  about  what  men 
ought  to  do,  and  about  the  intricate  relations  between  law 
and  passion  in  human  life.  Well,  as  even  the  most  frivo- 
lous or  scandalous  gossip  really  manifests  an  intense,  if 
rude  concern,  for  the  primal  questions  of  moral  philoso- 
phy, so  our  children  and  all  our  most  simple  and  devout 
souls  constantly  talk  ontology,  discourse  of  being,  face 
the  central  issues  of  reality,  but  know  it  not.  Yet  once 
face  the  true  connection  of  abstract  theory  and  daily  life, 
and  then  one  easily  sees  that  life  means  theory,  and  that 
you  deal  constantly,  and  decisively,  with  the  problems  of 
the  Theory  of  Being  whenever  you  utter  a  serious  word. 
This  then  is  the  reason  why  our  ontological  studies  will 
bear  directly  upon  the  daily  concerns  of  religion. 

Our  discussion  of  the  general  meaning  and  of  the  rela- 
tive value  of  the  various  ontological  predicates  will,  more- 
over, throw  light,  as  we  go,  upon  some  of  the  best  known 
of  the  special  issues  of  the  history  of  theology.  We  shall 
see,  for  instance,  what  has  been  the  real  motive  that  has 
made  the  doctrine  of  the  speculative  Mystics  so  important 
a  factor  in  the  life  of  the  more  complex  religious  faiths. 
We  shall  see  too,  in  the  great  historical  conflicts  between 
the  Realistic  and  the  Mystical  conceptions  of  the  nature 
of  Reality,  the  source  of  some  of  the  most  important  con- 


INTRODUCTION:   THE   RELIGIOUS   PROBLEMS       15 

troversies  concerning  the  being  and  attributes  of  God, 
the  existence  of  the  physical  world,  and  the  nature  of 
human  individuality.  Thus  we  shall  gradually  approach 
a  position  where  we  shall  learn  the  inevitableness  of  a  cer- 
tain final  conception  of  the  meaning  of  our  ontological 
predicates  ;  and  the  result  of  our  critical  study  will  be  a 
light  that  we  may  not  wholly  have  anticipated,  both  upon 
the  conception  of  God,  and  upon  our  notion  of  the  re- 
lations between  God,  the  World,  and  the  Human  Indi- 
vidual. With  the  development  of  these  fundamental 
conceptions,  the  first  of  my  two  series  of  lectures  will 
close.  We  shall  herewith  have  stated  the  bases  of 
religion. 

The  second  series  I  intend  first  to  devote  to  the  appli- 
cation of  our  fundamental  conceptions  to  the  more  special 
problems  of  the  nature  of  the  human  Ego,  the  meaning  of 
the  finite  realm  called  the  Physical  World,  and  the  inter- 
pretation of  Evolution.  The  vast  extent  of  the  discussions 
thus  suggested  will  be  limited,  in  our  own  case,  by  the 
very  fact  that  we  shall  here  be  attempting  merely  the 
application  of  a  single  very  general  ontological  idea  to  a 
few  problems  which  we  shall  view  rather  as  illustrations 
of  our  central  thesis  concerning  Reality,  than  as  matters 
to  be  exhaustively  considered  for  their  own  sake.  Hav- 
ing thus  sketched  our  Cosmology,  if  I  may  call  it  such, 
we  shall  then  conclude  the  whole  undertaking  by  a  sum- 
mary discussion  of  the  problems  of  Good  and  Evil,  of 
Freedom,  of  Immortality,  arid  of  the  destiny  of  the  Indi- 
vidual, still  reviewing  our  problems  in  the  light  of  our 
general  conception  of  Being.  The  title  that  I  shall  have 
given  to  the  whole  course  of  lectures,  "  The  World  and 


16     THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF   BEING 

the  Individual "  will  thus,  I  hope,  prove  to  be  justified  by 
the  scope  of  our  discussion  in  the  two  divisions  of  this 
course. 

Ill 

The  plan  of  the  proposed  investigation  has  now  been 
set  before  you  in  outline.  May  I  next  undertake  to  indi- 
cate a  little  more  precisely  not  merely  what  problems  we 
are  to  attempt,  but  the  sort  of  positive  argument  that  we 
are  to  use,  and  the  kind  of  result  that  we  may  hope  to 
reach  ?  A  philosophy  must  indeed  be  judged  not  by  its 
theses,  but  by  its  methods  ;  and  not  upon  the  basis  of 
mere  summaries,  but  after  a  consideration  of  the  details 
of  its  argument.  Yet  it  helps  to  make  clearer  the  way 
through  an  intricate  realm  of  inquiry  if  one  first  surveys, 
as  it  were,  from  above,  the  country  through  which,  in 
such  an  enterprise,  the  road  is  to  pass.  I  propose  then,  to 
indicate  at  once,  and  in  the  rest  of  this  lecture,  where  the 
central  problem  of  the  Theory  of  Being  lies,  and  by  what 
method  I  think  that  this  problem  is,  in  a  general  sense,  to 
be  solved.  To  state  the  proposed  solution,  however,  even 
in  the  most  abstract  and  necessarily  unconvincing  fashion, 
is  to  arouse  comments  as  to  the  meaning  of  this  thesis,  as 
to  its  consequences,  and,  above  all,  in  a  discussion  like  the 
present,  as  to  its  bearing  upon  the  more  practical  interests 
of  religion.  I  think  that  we  may  be  helped  to  an  under- 
standing hereafter,  if  I  attempt  at  once  to  call  out,  and, 
by  anticipation,  to  answer,  a  few  such  comments. 

I  am  one  of  those  who  hold  that  when  you  ask  the 
question  :  What  is  an  Idea  ?  and  :  How  can  Ideas  stand 
in  any  true  relation  to  Reality?  you  attack  the  world- 


INTRODUCTION:  THE  RELIGIOUS  PROBLEMS       17 

knot  in  the  way  that  promises  most  for  the  untying  of  its 
meshes.  This  way  is,  of  course,  very  ancient.  It  is  the 
way  of  Plato,  and,  in  a  sense,  already  the  way  of  his  Mas- 
ter. It  is,  in  a  different  sense,  the  way  of  Kant.  If  you 
view  philosophy  in  this  fashion,  you  subordinate  the  study 
of  the  World  as  Fact  to  a  reflection  upon  the  World  as 
Idea.  Begin  by  accepting,  upon  faith  and  tradition,  the 
mere  brute  Reality  of  the  World  as  Fact,  and  there  you 
are,  sunk  deep  in  an  ocean  of  mysteries.  The  further  you 
then  proceed  in  the  study  of  that  world,  the  longer  seems 
the  way  to  God  or  to  clearness,  unless  you  from  the  start 
carry  with  you  some  sort  of  faith,  perhaps  a  very  blind 
and  immediate  faith,  that  God  reigns,  or  that  the  facts  in 
themselves  are  somehow  clear.  The  World  as  Fact  sur- 
prises you  with  all  sorts  of  strange  contrasts.  Now  it 
reveals  to  you,  in  the  mechanics  and  physics  of  the  stars 
or  in  the  processes  of  living  beings,  vast  realms  of  marvel- 
lous reasonableness  ;  now  it  bewilders  you,  in  the  endless 
diversities  of  natural  facts,  by  a  chaos  of  unintelligible 
fragments  and  of  scattered  events  ;  now  it  lifts  up  your 
heart  with  wondrous  glimpses  of  ineffable  goodness  ;  and 
now  it  arouses  your  wrath  by  frightful  signs  of  cruelty 
and  baseness.  Conceive  it  as  a  realm  for  pure  scientific 
theory  ;  and,  so  far  as  your  knowledge  reaches,  it  is  full 
at  once  of  the  show  of  a  noble  order,  and  of  hints  of  a 
vain  chance.  On  the  other  hand,  conceive  it  as  a  realm 
of  values,  attempt  to  estimate  its  worth,  and  it  baffles  you 
with  caprices,  like  a  charming  and  yet  hopelessly  way- 
ward child,  or  like  a  bad  fairy.  That  is  the  world  of 
brute  natural  fact  as  you,  with  your  present  form  of  con- 
sciousness, are  forced  to  observe  it,  if  you  try  to  get  any 


18    THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

total  impression  of  its  behavior.  And  so,  this  World  of 
Fact  daily  announces  itself  to  you  as  a  defiant  mystery  — 
a  mystery  such  as  Job  faced,  and  such  as  the  latest  agnos- 
tic summary  of  empirical  results,  in  their  bearing  upon 
our  largest  human  interests,  or  such  as  even  the  latest 
pessimistic  novel  will  no  doubt  any  day  present  afresh  to 
you,  in  all  the  ancient  unkindliness  that  belongs  to  human 
fortune. 

The  World  as  Fact  is,  then,  for  all  of  us,  persistently 
baffling,  unless  we  find  somewhere  else  the  key  to  it. 
The  philosophers  of  the  Platonic  type  have,  however,  long 
ago  told  us  that  this  defect  of  our  world  of  fact  is  due,  at 
bottom,  simply  to  the  fault  of  our  human  type  of  con- 
sciousness. And  hence  a  whole  realm  of  philosophical 
inquiry  has  been  devoted,  in  the  best  ages  of  speculative 
thinking,  to  a  criticism  of  this  human  type  of  conscious- 
ness itself.  Upon  such  a  criticism,  Plato  founded  his 
conception  of  the  Ideal  World.  By  such  criticism,  Ploti- 
nus  sought  to  find  the  way  upwards,  through  Soul  to  the 
realm  of  the  Intellect,  and  beyond  the  Intellect  to  his 
Absolute  "  One."  Through  a  similar  criticism,  Scholastic 
doctrine  attempted  to  purify  our  human  type  of  con- 
sciousness, until  it  should  reach  the  realm  of  genuine 
spirituality,  and  attain  an  insight  but  a  little  lower  than 
that  of  the  conceived  angelic  type  of  intelligence.  For 
all  such  thinkers,  the  raising  of  our  type  of  consciousness 
to  some  higher  level  meant  not  only  the  winning  of  in- 
sight into  Reality,  but  also  the  attainment  of  an  inner  and 
distinctly  religious  ideal.  To  a  later  and  less  technically 
pious  form  of  thinking,  one  sees  the  transition  in  Spinoza, 
who  was  at  once,  as  we  now  know,  a  child  of  Scholasti- 


INTRODUCTION:   THE  RELIGIOUS  PROBLEMS       19 

cism,  and  a  student  of  the  more  modern  physical  concep- 
tions of  his  day, — at  once  a  mystic,  a  realist,  and  a  partisan 
of  nature.  For  Spinoza  too,  it  is  our  type  of  finite  con- 
sciousness that  makes  our  daily  world  of  fact,  or,  as  he 
prefers  to  say,  of  imagination,  seem  chaotic  ;  and  the  way 
to  truth  still  is  to  be  found  through,  an  inner  and  reflect- 
ive purification  of  experience.  A  "widely  different  inter- 
pretation is  given  to  the  same  fundamental  conception,  by 
Kant.  But  in  Kant's  case  also,  remote  from  his  interests 
as  is  anything  savoring  of  mysticism,  the  end  of  philosoph- 
ical insight  is  again  the  vindication  of  a  higher  form  of 
consciousness.  For  Kant,  however,  this  is  the  conscious- 
ness of  the  Moral  Reason,  which  recognizes  no  facts  as 
worthy  of  its  form  of  assurance,  except  the  facts  implied 
by  the  Good  Will,  and  by  the  Law  of  the  good  will.  All 
these  ways  then  of  asserting  the  primacy  of  the  World  as 
Idea  over  the  World  as  Fact,  agree  in  dealing  with  the 
problem  of  Reality  from  the  side  of  the  means  through 
which  we  are  supposed  to  be  able  to  attain  reality,  that  is, 
from  the  side  of  the  Ideas. 

IV 

But  if  this  is  to  be  the  general  nature  of  our  own 
inquiry  also,  then  everything  for  us  will  depend  upon 
the  fundamental  questions,  already  stated,  viz.  first : 
What  is  an  Idea  ?  and  second  :  How  can  an  Idea  be 
related  to  Reality?  In  the  treatment  of  both  these 
questions,  however,  various  methods  and  theories  at 
once  come  into  sight.  And,  to  begin  with  one  of  the 
favorite  issues,  namely  the  fundamental  definition  of  the 


20     THE   FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

word  "idea"  itself,  there  is  a  well-known  tendency  in  a 
good  deal  of  philosophy,  both  ancient  and  modern, 
either  to  define  an  idea,  as  an  Image,  destined  to  pic- 
ture facts  external  to  the  idea,  or  else,  in  some  other 
way,  to  lay  stress  upon  the  externally  cognitive  or 
"representative"  value  of  an  idea  as  its  immediately 
obvious  and  its  most  essential  aspect.  From  this 
point  of  view,  men  have  conceived  that  the  power  of 
ideas  to  know  a  Reality  external  to  themselves,  was 
indeed  either  something  too  obvious  to  excite  inquiry, 
or  else  an  ultimate  and  inexplicable  power.  "  Ideas 
exist,"  says  this  view,  "  and  they  exist  as  knowing  facts 
external  to  themselves.  And  this  is  their  funda- 
mental character."  Now  I  myself  shall,  in  these  lectures, 
regard  this  power  of  ideas  to  cognize  facts  external  to 
themselves  not  as  a  primal  fact  of  existence  but  as 
an  aspect  of  ideas  which  decidedly  needs  reflective  con- 
sideration, and  a  very  critical  restatement.  Hence  I 
cannot  here  begin  by  saying  :  "  Ideas  are  states  of  mind 
that  image  facts  external  to  themselves."  That  would 
be  useful  enough  as  a  definition  of  ideas  in  a  Psy- 
chology of  Cognition.  For  such  a  Psychology  would 
presuppose  what  we  are  here  critically  to  consider, 
namely,  the  very  possibility  of  a  cognition  of  Being. 
But,  for  the  purpose  of  our  present  theory,  the  defini- 
tion of  the  term  "idea"  must  be  made  in  such  wise  as 
not  formally  to  presuppose  the  power  of  ideas  to  have 
cognitive  relations  to  outer  objects. 

Moreover,  in  attempting  a  definition  of  the  general 
term  "idea,"  while  I  shall  not  be  attempting  a  psychology 
of  cognition,  I  shall  myself  be  guided  by  certain  psy- 


INTRODUCTION:   THE   RELIGIOUS   PROBLEMS        21 

chological  analyses  of  the  mere  contents  of  our  con- 
sciousness,—  analyses  which  have  become  prominent 
in  recent  discussion.  What  is  often  called  the  active 
and  sometimes  also  the  motor  aspect  of  our  mental 
life,  has  been  much  dwelt  upon  of  late.  This  is  no 
place,  and  at  present  we  have  no  need,  for  a  psycho- 
logical theory  of  the  origin  or  of  the  causes  of  what 
is  called  activity,  but  as  a  fact,  you  have  in  your  men- 
tal life  a  sort  of  consciousness  accompanying  the  pro- 
cesses by  which,  as  the  psychologists  are  accustomed  to 
say,  you  adjust  your  organism  to  its  environment ;  and 
this  sort  of  consciousness  differs,  in  some  notable  fea- 
tures, from  what  takes  place  in  your  mind  in  so  far  as 
the  mere  excitation  of  your  sense  organs  by  the  outer 
world  is  regarded  apart  from  the  experiences  that  you 
have  when  you  are  said  to  react  upon  your  impres- 
sions. The  difference  between  merely  seeing  your 
friend,  or  hearing  his  voice,  and  consciously  or  actively 
regarding  him  as  your  friend,  and  behaving  towards 
him  in  a  friendly  way,  is  a  difference  obvious  to  con- 
sciousness, whatever  your  theory  of  the  sources  of  men- 
tal activity.  Now  this  difference  between  outer  sense 
impressions,  or  images  derived  from  such  impressions, 
and  active  responses  to  sense  impressions,  or  ideas 
founded  upon  such  responses,  is  not  merely  a  difference 
between  what  is  sometimes  called  the  intellect,  and 
what  is  called  the  will.  For,  as  a  fact,  the  intellectual 
life  is  as  much  bound  up  with  our  consciousness  of  our 
acts  as  is  the  will.  There  is  no  purely  intellectual  life, 
just  as  there  is  no  purely  voluntary  life.  The  differ- 
ence between  knowledge  and  will,  so  far  as  it  has  a 


22     THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

metaphysical  meaning,  will  concern  us  much  later.  For 
the  present,  it  is  enough  to  note  that  your  intelligent 
ideas  of  things  never  consist  of  mere  images  of  the 
things,  but  always  involve  a  consciousness  of  how  you 
propose  to  act  towards  the  things  of  which  you  have 
ideas.  A  sword  is  an  object  that  you  would  propose 
to  use,  or  to  regard  in  one  way,  while  a  pen  is  to  be 
used  in  another ;  your  idea  of  the  object  involves  the 
memory  of  the  appropriate  act.  Your  idea  of  your 
friend  differs  from  your  idea  of  your  enemy  by  virtue 
of  your  consciousness  of  your  different  attitude  and 
intended  behaviour  towards  these  objects.  Complex 
scientific  ideas,  viewed  as  to  their  conscious  signifi- 
cance, are,  as  Professor  Stout1  has  well  said,  plans  of 
action,  ways  of  constructing  the  objects  of  your  scien- 
tific consciousness.  Intelligent  ideas  then,  belong,  so 
to  speak,  to  the  motor  side  of  your  life  rather  than  to 
the  merely  sensory.  This  was  what  Kant  meant  by  the 
spontaneity  of  the  understanding.  To  be  sure,  a  true 
scientific  idea  is  a  mental  construction  supposed  to  cor- 
respond with  an  outer  object,  or  to  imitate  that  object. 
But  when  we  try  to  define  the  idea  in  itself,  as  a  con- 
scious fact,  our  best  means  is  to  lay  stress  upon  the  sort 
of  will,  or  active  meaning,  which  any  idea  involves  for 
the  mind  that  forms  the  idea. 

By  the  word  "  Idea,"  then,  as  we  shall  use  it  when,  after 
having  criticised  opposing  theories,  we  come  to  state,  in 
these  lectures,  our  own  thesis,  I  shall  mean  in  the  end  any 
state  of  consciousness,  whether  simple  or  complex,  which, 
when  present,  is  then  and  there  viewed  as  at  least  the  par- 

1  Stout,  Analytic  Psychology,  Vol.  II,  Chap.  VIII,  especially  pp.  114, 124. 


INTRODUCTION:  THE   RELIGIOUS  PROBLEMS       23 

tial  expression  or  embodiment  of  a  single  conscious  pur- 
pose. I  shall  indeed  say  nothing  for  the  present  as  to  what 
causes  an  idea.  But  I  shall  assert  that  an  idea  appears  in 
consciousness  as  having  the  significance  of  an  act  of  will. 
I  shall  also  dwell  upon  the  inner  purpose,  and  not  upon 
the  external  relations,  as  the  primary  and  essential  feature 
of  an  idea.  For  instance,  you  sing  to  yourself  a  melody, 
you  are  then  and  there  conscious  that  the  melody  as  you 
hear  yourself  singing  it,  partially  fulfils  and  embodies  a 
purpose.  Well,  in  this  sense,  your  melody,  at  the  mo- 
ment when  you  sing  it,  or  even  when  you  silently  listen 
to  its  imagined  presence,  constitutes  a  musical  idea,  and  is 
often  so  called.  You  may  so  regard  the  melody  without 
yet  explicitly  dwelling  upon  the  externally  cognitive 
value  of  the  musical  idea,  as  the  representative  of  a  melody 
sung  or  composed  by  somebody  else.  You  may  even  sup- 
pose the  melody  original  with  yourself,  unique,  and  sung 
now  for  the  first  time.  Even  so,  it  would  remain  just  as 
truly  a  musical  idea,  however  partial  or  fragmentary  ;  for 
it  would  then  and  there,  when  sung,  or  even  when  in- 
wardly heard,  partly  embody  your  own  conscious  purpose. 
In  the  same  sense,  any  conscious  act,  at  the  moment  when 
you  perform  it,  not  merely  expresses,  but  is,  in  my  present 
sense,  an  idea.  To  count  ten  is  thus  also  an  idea,  if  the 
counting  fulfils  and  embodies,  in  however  incomplete  and 
fragmentary  a  way,  your  conscious  purpose,  and  that 
quite  apart  from  the  fact  that  counting  ten  also  may 
enable  you  to  cognize  the  numerical  character  of  facts  ex- 
ternal to  the  conscious  idea  of  ten  itself.  In  brief,  an 
idea,  in  my  present  definition  may,  and,  as  a  fact  always 
does,  if  you  please,  appear  to  be  representative  of  a  fact 


24    THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

existent  beyond  itself.  But  the  primary  character,  which 
makes  it  an  idea,  is  not  this  its  representative  character, 
is  not  its  vicarious  assumption  of  the  responsibility  of 
standing  for  a  being  beyond  itself,  but  is  its  inner  charac- 
ter as  relatively  fulfilling  the  purpose  (that  is,  as  present- 
ing the  partial  fulfilment  of  the  purpose),  which  is  in  the 
consciousness  of  the  moment  wherein  the  idea  takes  place. 
It  is  in  this  sense  that  we  speak  of  any  artistic  idea,  as 
present  in  the  creative  mind  of  the  artist.  I  propose,  in 
stating  my  own  view  hereafter,  to  use  the  word  "  idea  "  in 
this  general  sense. 

Well,  this  definition  of  the  primary  character  of  an 
idea,  enables  me  at  once  to  deal  with  a  conception  which 
will  play  no  small  part  in  our  later  discussions.  I  refer 
to  the  very  conception  of  the  Meaning  of  an  idea.  One 
very  fair  way  to  define  an  idea,  had  we  chosen  to  use  that 
way,  might  have  been  to  say  :  An  Idea  is  any  state  of 
mind  that  has  a  conscious  meaning.  Thus,  according  to 
my  present  usage  of  the  word  "  idea,"  a  color,  when  merely 
seen,  is  in  so  far,  for  consciousness,  no  idea.  A  brute 
noise,  merely  heard,  is  no  idea.  But  a  melody,  when 
sung,  a  picture,  when  in  its  wholeness  actively  appreci- 
ated, or  the  inner  memory  of  your  friend  now  in  your 
mind,  is  an  idea.  For  each  of  these  latter  states  means 
something  to  you  at  the  instant  when  you  get  it  present 
to  consciousness.  But  now,  what  is  this  meaning  of  any 
idea  ?  What  does  one  mean  by  a  meaning  ?  To  this 
question,  I  give,  for  the  instant,  an  intentionally  partial 
answer.  I  have  just  said  that  an  idea  is  any  state  of 
mind,  or  complex  of  states,  that,  when  present,  is  con- 
sciously viewed  as  the  relatively  completed  embodiment, 


INTRODUCTION:   THE  RELIGIOUS  PROBLEMS       25 

and  therefore  already  as  the  partial  fulfilment  of  a  pur- 
pose. Now  this  purpose,  just  in  so  far  as  it  gets  a  pres- 
ent conscious  embodiment  in  the  contents  and  in  the  form 
of  the  complex  state  called  the  idea,  constitutes  what  I 
shall  hereafter  call  the  Internal  Meaning  of  the  Idea.  Or, 
to  repeat,  the  state  or  complex  of  states  called  the  idea, 
presents  to  consciousness  the  expressed  although  in  gen- 
eral the  incomplete  fulfilment  of  a  purpose.  In  presence 
of  this  fulfilment,  one  could,  as  it  were,  consciously  say: 
"  That  is  what  I  want,  and  just  in  so  far  I  have  it.  The 
purpose  of  singing  or  of  imagining  the  melody  is  what 
I  want  fulfilled  ;  and,  in  this  musical  idea,  I  have  it 
at  least  partially  fulfilled."  Well,  this  purpose,  when 
viewed  as  fulfilled  through  the  state  called  the  idea,  is 
the  internal  meaning  of  the  idea.  Or  yet  once  more,  —  to 
distinguish  our  terms  a  little  more  sharply,  —  in  advance 
of  the  presence  of  the  idea  in  consciousness,  one  could  ab- 
stractly speak  of  the  purpose  as  somewhat  not  yet  fulfilled. 
Hereupon  let  there  come  the  idea  as  the  complex  of  con- 
scious states,  the  so-called  act  wherein  this  purpose  gets, 
as  it  were,  embodied,  and  relatively  speaking,  accom- 
plished. Then,  finally,  we  shall  have  the  internal  meaning 
of  the  idea,  and  this  internal  meaning  of  the  completed  idea 
is  the  purpose  viewed  as  so  far  embodied  in  the  idea, 
the  soul,  as  it  were,  which  the  idea  gives  body.  Any 
idea  then,  viewed  as  a  collection  of  states,  must  have  its 
internal  meaning,  since,  being  an  idea,  it  does  in  some  de- 
gree embody  its  purpose.  And  our  two  terms,  "  purpose 
embodied  in  the  idea,"  and  "  internal  meaning  of  the  idea," 
represent  the  same  subject-matter  viewed  in  two  aspects. 
The  purpose  which  the  idea,  when  it  comes,  is  to  fulfil, 


26    THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

may  first  be  viewed  apart  from  the  fulfilment.  Then  it 
remains,  so  far,  mere  purpose.  Or  it  may  be  viewed  as 
expressed  and  so  far  partially  accomplished  by  means  of 
the  complex  state  called  the  idea,  and  then  it  is  termed 
"  the  present  internal  meaning  of  this  state." 


So  now  we  have  defined  what  we  mean  by  an  idea,  and 
what  we  mean  by  the  internal  meaning  of  an  idea.  But 
ideas  often  seem  to  have  a  meaning,  yes,  as  one  must  add, 
finite  ideas  always  undertake  or  appear  to  have  a  mean- 
ing, that  is  not  exhausted  by  this  conscious  internal 
meaning  presented  and  relatively  fulfilled  at  the  moment 
when  the  idea  is  there  for  our  finite  view.  The  melody 
sung,  the  artist's  idea,  the  thought  of  your  absent  friend 
—  a  thought  on  which  you  love  to  dwell :  all  these  not 
merely  have  their  obvious  internal  meaning,  as  meeting  a 
conscious  purpose  by  their  very  presence,  but  also  they  at 
least  appear  to  have  that  other  sort  of  meaning,  that  ref- 
erence beyond  themselves  to  objects,  that  cognitive  rela- 
tion to  outer  facts,  that  attempted  correspondence  with 
outer  facts,  which  many  accounts  of  our  ideas  regard  as 
their  primary,  inexplicable,  and  ultimate  character.  I 
call  this  second,  and,  for  me,  still  problematic  and  derived 
aspect  of  the  nature  of  ideas,  their  apparently  External 
Meaning.  In  this  sense  it  is  that  I  say,  "  The  melody 
sung  by  me  not  only  is  an  idea  internally  meaning  the 
embodiment  of  my  purpose  at  the  instant  when  I  sing 
it,  but  also  is  an  idea  that  means,  and  that  in  this  sense 
externally  means,  the  object  called,  say,  a  certain  theme 


INTRODUCTION:  THE  RELIGIOUS  PROBLEMS       27 

which  Beethoven  composed."  In  this  same  sense,  your 
idea  of  your  absent  friend,  is,  for  my  definition,  an  idea 
primarily,  because  you  now  fulfil  some  of  your  love  for 
dwelling  upon  your  inner  affection  for  your  friend  by 
getting  the  idea  present  to  mind.  But  you  also  regard  it 
as  an  idea  which,  in  the  external  sense,  is  said  to  mean 
the  real  being  called  your  friend,  in  so  far  as  the  idea  is 
said  to  refer  to  that  real  friend,  and  to  resemble  him. 
This  external  meaning,  I  say,  appears  to  be  very  different 
from  the  internal  meaning,  and  wholly  to  transcend  the 
latter. 

By  thus  first  distinguishing  sharply  between  the  con- 
scious internal  meaning  of  an  idea  and  its  apparently 
external  meaning,  we  get  before  us  an  important  way  of 
stating  the  problem  of  knowledge  or,  in  other  words,  the 
problem  of  the  whole  relation  between  Idea  and  Being. 
We  shall  find  this  not  only  a  very  general,  but  a  very 
fundamental,  and,  as  I  believe,  despite  numerous  philo- 
sophical discussions,  still  a  comparatively  neglected  way. 
And  in  problems  of  this  kind  so  much  turns  upon  the 
statement  of  the  issue,  that  I  must  be  excused  for  thus 
dwelling  at  length,  at  this  early  stage,  upon  the  precise 
sense  in  which  we  are  to  employ  our  terms. 

Plainly,  then,  whoever  studies  either  a  special  science, 
or  a  problem  of  general  metaphysics,  is  indeed  concerned 
with  what  he  then  and  there  views  as  the  external  mean- 
ing of  certain  ideas.  And  an  idea,  when  thus  viewed,  ap- 
pears as  if  it  were  essentially  a  sort  of  imitation  or  image 
of  a  being,  and  this  being,  the  external  object  of  our 
thoughtful  imitation,  appears  to  be,  in  so  far,  quite  separate 
from  these  our  ideas  that  imitate  its  characters  or  that 


28     THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

attempt  to  correspond  to  them.  From  such  a  point  of 
view,  our  ideas  seemed  destined  to  perform  a  task  which  is 
externally  set  for  them  by  the  real  world.  I  count,  but 
I  count,  in  ordinary  life,  what  I  take  to  be  real  objects, 
existent  quite  apart  from  my  counting.  Suppose  that  I 
count  ships  seen  from  the  shore.  There,  says  common 
sense,  are  the  ships,  sailing  by  themselves,  and  quite  indif- 
ferent to  whether  anybody  counts  them  or  not.  In  ad- 
vance of  the  counting,  the  ships,  in  so  far  as  they  are  a 
real  collection,  have  their  number.  This  common  sense 
also  presupposes.  Let  there  be  seen,  yonder,  on  the  sea, 
nine  ships  or  ten  ;  this  number  of  the  real  ships  is  in 
itself  determinate.  It  does  not  result  from  my  counting, 
but  is  the  standard  for  the  latter  to  follow.  The  numer- 
ical ideas  of  anybody  who  counts  the  ships  must  either 
repeat  the  preexistent  facts,  or  else  fail  to  report  those 
facts  accurately.  That  alternative  seems  absolute  and 
final.  The  question  how  anybody  ever  comes  to  count 
ships  at  all,  is  a  question  for  psychology.  But  there 
remains  for  the  seeker  after  metaphysical  truth,  just  as 
much  as  for  the  man  of  common  sense,  the  apparently 
sharp  alternative  :  Either  actual  ships,  whose  multitude 
is  just  what  it  happens  to  be,  whose  number  preexists,  in 
advance  of  any  counting,  are  correctly  represented  by  the 
ideas  of  one  who  happens  to  be  able  to  count,  or  else  these 
ships  are  incorrectly  counted.  In  the  latter  case  we  seem 
to  be  forced  to  say  that  the  counting  process  misses  its 
external  aim.  In  the  former  case  we  say  that  the  ideas 
expressed  by  the  one  who  counts  are  true.  But  in  both 
cases  alike  the  ideas  in  question  thus  appear  to  be  true  or 
false  by  virtue  of  their  external  meaning,  by  virtue  of  the 


INTRODUCTION:   THE  RELIGIOUS  PROBLEMS       29 

toct  that  they  either  correspond  or  do  not  correspond  to 
facts  which  are  themselves  no  part  of  the  ideas.  This 
simple  instance  of  the  ships  and  of  the  ideas  of  a  man 
who  sits  watching  and  counting  the  ships,  is  obviously 
typical  of  all  instances  of  the  familiar  relation  of  ideas  to 
Being,  as  the  metaphysic  of  common  sense  views  Being,  or 
of  the  relation  of  ideas  to  what  we  have  here  called  the 
objects  of  their  external  meaning.  That  ideas  have  such 
external  meanings,  that  they  do  refer  to  facts  existent 
wholly  apart  from  themselves,  that  their  relation  to  these 
facts  is  one  of  successful  correspondence  or  of  error-pro- 
ducing non-correspondence,  that  the  ideas  in  so  far  aim, 
not  merely  to  embody,  like  the  musical  ideas  just  exem- 
plified, an  internal  purpose,  but  also  to  imitate,  in  the 
form  of  their  conscious  structure  and  in  the  relationship 
of  their  own  elements,  the  structure  and  relationship  of  a 
world  of  independent  facts,  —  what  could  possibly  seem, 
from  such  a  common-sense  point  of  view,  more  obvious 
than  all  this  ?  And  if  common  sense  presupposes  that 
ideas  have  such  external  meanings,  how  much  more  does 
not  natural  science  appear  to  involve  the  recognition  of 
this  essentially  imitative  function  of  ideas  ? 

In  any  special  natural  science,  a  scientific  description 
appears  as  an  adjustment,  express,  conscious,  exact,  of  the 
internal  structure  of  a  system  of  ideas  to  the  external 
structure  of  a  world  of  preexistent  facts  ;  and  the  busi- 
ness of  science  has  been  repeatedly  defined,  of  late  years, 
as  simply  and  wholly  taken  up  with  the  exact  description 
of  the  facts  of  nature.  Now  the  world  of  Being,  when 
viewed  in  this  light,  appears  to  mean  simply  the  same  as 
the  fact  world,  the  external  object  of  our  ideas,  the  object 


30    THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

that  ideas  must  imitate,  whatever  their  internal  purpose, 
unless  they  want  to  be  false.  But  for  this  very  reason, 
no  study  of  the  inner  structure  of  ideas,  of  their  conscious 
conformity  to  their  internal  purpose,  can  so  far  promise 
to  throw  any  direct  light  upon  their  success  in  fulfilling 
their  external  purpose.  Or,  as  people  usually  say,  you 
cannot  make  out  the  truth  about  facts  by  studying  your 
"mere  ideas."  And  so,  as  people  constantly  insist,  no  de- 
votion to  the  elaboration  of  the  internal  meaning  of  your 
own  ideas  can  get  you  in  presence  of  the  truth  about 
Being.  The  world  of  Being  is  whatever  it  happens  to  be, 
as  the  collection  of  ships  is  what  it  is,  before  you  count. 
Internal  purposes  cannot  predetermine  external  con- 
formity to  truth.  You  cannot  evolve  facts  out  of  your 
inner  consciousness.  Ideas  about  Being  are  not  to  be 
justified  like  melodies,  by  their  internal  conformity  to 
the  purpose  of  the  moment  when  they  consciously  live. 
They  must  submit  to  standards  that  they  themselves  in 
no  sense  create.  Such  is  the  burden  of  common  sense, 
and  of  special  science,  when  they  tell  us  about  this  aspect 
of  the  meaning  of  our  ideas. 

I  state  thus  explicitly  a  very  familiar  view  as  to  the 
whole  externally  cognitive  function  and  value  of  ideas. 
I  mean  thus  to  emphasize  the  primary  appearance  of 
hopeless  contrast  between  the  internal  purpose  and  the 
external  validity  of  ideas.  In  fact,  nothing  could  seem 
sharper  than  the  contrast  thus  indicated  between  the 
melody  on  the  one  hand,  the  musical  idea,  as  it  comes  to 
mind  and  is  enjoyed  for  its  beauty  while  it  passes  before 
consciousness,  and  the  counting  of  the  ships,  on  the  other 
hand,  —  a  process  whose  whole  success  depends  upon  its 


INTRODUCTION:   THE  RELIGIOUS  PROBLEMS       31 

conformity  to  what  seem  to  be  absolutely  indifferent  and 
independent  outer  facts.  In  the  one  case  we  have  the 
embodiment  of  a  conscious  inner  purpose,  —  a  purpose 
which  is  won  through  the  very  act  of  the  moment,  and  by 
virtue  of  the  mere  presence  of  a  certain  series  of  mental 
contents.  In  the  other  case  we  have  a  conformity  to 
outer  truth,  —  a  conformity  that  no  inner  clearness,  no 
well-wrought  network  of  cunning  ideal  contrivance,  can 
secure,  unless  the  idea  first  submits  to  the  authority  of 
external  existence. 

And  yet,  sharp  as  is  this  apparent  contrast,  every  stu- 
dent of  philosophy  knows  how  profound  are  also  the 
motives  that  have  led  some  philosophers  to  doubt  whether 
such  contrast  can  really  be  as  ultimate  as  it  seems.  After 
all,  the  counting  of  the  ships  is  valid  or  invalid  not  alone 
because  of  the  supposed  independent  being  of  the  ships, 
but  also  because  of  the  conscious  act  whereby  just  this 
collection  of  ships  was  first  consciously  selected  for  count- 
ing. After  all,  then,  no  idea  is  true  or  is  false  except  with 
reference  to  the  object  that  this  very  idea  first  means  to 
select  as  its  own  object.  Apart  from  what  the  idea  itself 
thus  somehow  assigns  as  its  own  task,  even  that  indepen- 
dent being  yonder,  if  you  assume  such  being,  cannot  de- 
termine the  success  or  failure  of  the  idea.  It  is  the  idea 
then  that  first  says  :  "  I  mean  this  or  that  object.  That 
is  for  my  object.  Of  that  I  am  thinking.  To  that  I 
want  to  conform."  And  apart  from  such  conscious  se- 
lection, apart  from  such  ideal  predetermination  of  the 
object  on  the  part  of  the  idea,  apart  from  such  free  volun- 
tary submission  of  the  idea  to  its  self-imposed  task,  the 
object  itself,  the  fact  world,  in  its  independence,  can  do 


32    THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL   CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

nothing  either  to  confirm  or  refute  the  idea.  Now  in 
this  extremely  elementary  consideration,  namely,  in  the 
consideration  that  unless  ideas  first  voluntarily  bind 
themselves  to  a  given  task,  and  so,  by  their  internal  pur- 
pose, already  commit  themselves  to  a  certain  selection  of 
its  object,  they  are  neither  true  nor  false,  —  in  this  con- 
sideration, I  say,  there  may  be  hidden  consequences  that 
we  shall  later  find  momentous  for  the  whole  theory  of 
Being  and  of  truth.  This  consideration,  that  despite  the 
seemingly  hopeless  contrast  between  internal  and  ex- 
ternal meaning,  ideas  really  possess  truth  or  falsity  only 
by  virtue  of  their  own  selection  of  their  task  as  ideas,  is 
essentially  the  same  as  the  consideration  that  led  Kant  to 
regard  the  understanding  as  the  creator  of  the  phenome- 
nal nature  over  which  science  gradually  wins  conscious 
control,  and  that  led  Hegel  to  call  the  world  the  embodied 
Idea.  This  consideration,  then,  is  not  novel,  but  I  believe 
it  to  be  fundamental  and  of  inexhaustible  importance.  I 
believe  also  that  some  of  its  aspects  are  still  far  too  much 
neglected.  And  I  propose  to  devote  these  lectures  to  its 
elaboration,  and  to  a  study  of  its  relations  to  the  various 
conceptions  of  Reality  which  have  determined  the  scien- 
tific and  religious  life  of  humanity. 

In  any  case  I  say,  then,  at  the  outset,  that  the  whole 
problem  of  the  nature  of  Being  will  for  us,  in  the  end, 
reduce  to  the  question:  How  is  the  internal  meaning 
of  ideas  consistent  with  their  apparently  external  mean- 
ing ?  Or  again :  How  is  it  possible  that  an  idea,  which  is 
an  idea  essentially  and  primarily  because  of  the  inner 
purpose  that  it  consciously  fulfils  by  its  presence,  also 
possesses  a  meaning  that  in  any  sense  appears  to  go  beyond 


INTRODUCTION:   THE  RELIGIOUS  PROBLEMS       33 

this  internal  purpose  ?  We  shall,  in  dealing  with  this 
problem,  first  find,  by  a  development  of  the  consideration 
just  barely  indicated,  that  the  external  meaning  must 
itself  be  interpreted,  not  primarily  in  the  sense  of  mere 
dependence  upon  the  brute  facts,  but  in  terms  of  the 
inner  purpose  of  the  idea  itself.  We  shall,  perhaps  to 
our  surprise,  reach  the  seemingly  paradoxical  and  essen- 
tially idealistic  thesis  that  no  being  in  heaven  or  in  earth, 
or  in  the  waters  under  the  earth,  has  power  to  give  to  an 
idea  any  purpose  unless,  the  idea  itself,  as  idea,  as  a  frag- 
ment of  life,  as  a  conscious  thrill,  so  to  speak,  of  inner 
meaning,  first  somehow  truly  learns  so  to  develope  its 
internal  meaning  as  to  assign  to  itself  just  that  specific 
purpose.  In  other  words,  we  shall  find  that  while,  for 
our  purposes,  we,  the  critics,  must  first  sharply  distin- 
guish the  apparently  external  purpose  that,  as  it  were, 
from  without,  we  assign  to  the  idea,  from  the  internal 
meaning  of  the  idea,  as  present  to  a  passing  conscious 
instant,  still,  this  our  assignment  of  the  external  purpose, 
this  our  assertion  that  the  idea  knows  or  resembles,  or 
imitates,  or  corresponds  to,  fact  wholly  beyond  itself, 
must  in  the  end  be  justified,  if  at  all,  by  appeal  to  the 
truth,  i.e.  to  the  adequate  expression  and  development  of 
the  internal  meaning  of  the  idea  itself.  In  other  words, 
we  shall  find  either  that  the  external  meaning  is  genu- 
inely continuous  with  the  internal  meaning,  and  is  in- 
wardly involved  in  the  latter,  or  else  that  the  idea  has  no 
external  meaning  at  all.  In  brief,  our  abstract  sundering 
of  the  apparently  external  from  the  consciously  internal 
meaning  of  the  idea  must  be  first  made  very  sharp,  as  we 
have  just  deliberately  made  it,  only  in  order  that  later, 


34    THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

when  we  learn  the  true  relations,  we  may  come  to  see  the 
genuine  and  final  unity  of  internal  and  external  meaning. 
Our  first  definition  of  the  idea  seems  to  make,  yes,  in  its 
abstract  statement  deliberately  tries  to  make,  as  you  see, 
the  external  meaning  something  sharply  contrasted  with 
the  internal  meaning.  Our  final  result  will  simply  reab- 
sorb  the  secondary  aspect,  the  external  meaning,  into  the 
completed  primary  aspect,  —  the  completely  embodied  in- 
ternal meaning  of  the  idea.  We  shall  assert,  in  the  end, 
that  the  final  meaning  of  every  complete  idea,  when  fully 
developed,  must  be  viewed  as  wholly  an  internal  mean- 
ing, and  that  all  apparently  external  meanings  become 
consistent  with  internal  meanings  only  by  virtue  of  thus 
coming  to  be  viewed  as  aspects  of  the  true  internal 
meaning. 

To  illustrate  this  thesis  by  the  cases  already  used  :  The 
melody  sung  or  internally  but  voluntarily  heard,  in  the 
moment  of  memory,  is,  for  the  singer's  or  hearer's  con- 
sciousness, a  musical  idea.  It  has  so  far  its  internal 
meaning.  And  to  say  so  much  first  means  simply  that  to 
the  singer,  as  he  sings,  or  to  the  silent  memory  of  a  musi- 
cal imagination,  the  present  melody  imperfectly  and 
partially  fulfils  a  conscious  purpose,  the  purpose  of  the 
flying  moment.  On  the  other  hand,  the  melody  may  be 
viewed  by  a  critic  as  an  idea  corresponding  to  external 
facts.  The  singer  or  hearer  too  may  himself  say  as  he 
sings  or  remembers :  "  This  is  the  song  my  beloved 
sang,"  or  "  This  is  the  theme  that  Beethoven  composed  in 
his  Fidelio."  In  such  a  case,  the  idea  is  said  to  have  its 
apparently  external  meaning,  and  this,  its  reference  to 
facts,  not  now  and  here  given,  is  the  idea's  general  rela- 


INTRODUCTION:   THE  RELIGIOUS   PROBLEMS       35 

tion  to  what  we  call  true  Being.  And  such  reference  not 
only  seems  at  first  very  sharply  different  from  the  inter- 
nal meaning,  but  must,  for  our  purposes,  at  first  be  sun- 
dered by  definition  from  that  internal  meaning  even  more 
sharply  than  common  sense  distinguishes  the  two.  For 
abstract  sundering  is,  in  us  mortals,  the  necessary  prelim- 
inary to  grasping  the  unity  of  truth.  The  internal  mean- 
ing is  a  purpose  present  in  the  passing  moment,  but  here 
imperfectly  embodied.  Common  sense  calls  it,  as  such, 
an  expression  of  transient  living  intent,  an  affair  of  Will. 
Psychology  explains  the  presence  and  the  partial  present 
efficacy  of  this  purpose  by  the  laws  of  motor  processes,  of 
Habit,  or  of  what  is  often  called  association  Ethical 
doctrine  finds  in  such  winning  of  inner  purposes  the 
region  where  Conscience  itself,  and  the  pure  moral  Inten- 
tion, are  most  concerned.  On  the  other  hand,  the  appar- 
ently external  meaning  of  the  idea  is  at  first  said  to  be  an 
affair  of  the  externally  cognitive  intellect,  and  of  the  hard 
facts  of  an  independently  real  world.  Not  purpose,  but 
the  unchangeable  laws  of  the  Reality,  not  the  inner  life, 
but  the  Universe,  thus  at  first  seems  from  without  to  as- 
sign to  the  idea  whatever  external  meaning  it  is  to  obtain. 
Subject  and  Object  are  here  supposed  to  meet,  —  to  meet 
in  this  fact  that  ideas  have  their  external  meaning,  —  but 
to  meet  as  foreign  powers. 

Now  we  are  first  to  recognize,  even  more  clearly,  I 
say,  than  common  sense,  the  sharpness  of  this  apparent 
antithesis  between  the  conscious  internal  and  the  seem- 
ingly external  meaning.  Here,  as  I  have  said,  is  indeed 
the  world-knot.  We  are  to  recognize  the  problem,  but 
we  are,  nevertheless,  to  answer  it  in  the  end  (when  we 


36    THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

get  behind  the  appearances,  and  supplement  the  abstrac- 
tions), by  the  thesis  that  at  bottom,  the  external  mean- 
ing is  only  apparently  external,  and,  in  very  truth,  is 
but  an  aspect  of  the  completely  developed  internal  mean- 
ing. We  are  to  assert  that  just  what  the  internal 
meaning  already  imperfectly  but  consciously  is,  namely, 
purpose  relatively  fulfilled,  just  that,  and  nothing  else, 
the  apparently  external  meaning  when  truly  compre- 
hended also  proves  to  be,  namely,  the  entire  expression 
of  the  very  Will  that  is  fragmentarily  embodied  in  the 
life  of  the  flying  conscious  idea,  —  the  fulfilment  of  the 
very  aim  that  is  hinted  in  the  instant.  Or,  in  other 
words,  we  are  to  assert  that,  in  the  case  mentioned,  the 
artist  who  composed,  the  beloved  who  sang  the  melody, 
are  in  verity  present,  as  truly  implied  aspects  of  meaning, 
and  as  fulfilling  a  purpose,  in  the  completely  developed 
internal  meaning  of  the  very  idea  that  now,  in  its  fini- 
tude,  seems  to  view  them  merely  as  absent.  I  deliber- 
ately choose,  in  this  way,  a  paradoxical  illustration.  The 
argument  must  hereafter  justify  the  thesis.  I  can  here 
only  indicate  what  we  hereafter  propose  to  develope  as 
our  theory  of  the  true  relation  of  Idea  and  Being.  It 
will  also  be  a  theory,  as  you  see,  of  the  unity  of  the 
whole  very  World  Life  itself. 

In  brief,  by  considerations  of  this  type,  we  propose  to 
answer  the  question:  What  is  to  be?  by  the  assertion 
that :  To  be  means  simply  to  express,  to  embody  the 
complete  internal  meaning  of  a  certain  absolute  system 
of  ideas,  —  a  system,  moreover,  which  is  genuinely  im- 
plied in  the  true  internal  meaning  or  purpose  of  every 
finite  idea,  however  fragmentary. 


INTRODUCTION:  THE  RELIGIOUS  PROBLEMS       37 

VI 

You  may  observe  already,  even  in  this  wholly  pre- 
liminary sketch  of  the  particular  form  of  Idealism  to 
be  developed  in  these  lectures,  two  principal  features. 
First,  Our  account  of  the  nature  of  Being,  and  of  the 
relation  between  Idea  and  Being,  is  to  be  founded 
explicitly  upon  a  theory  of  the  way  in  which  ideas 
possess  their  own  meaning.  Secondly,  Our  theory  of 
the  nature  of  Meaning  is  to  be  founded  upon  a  defini- 
tion in  terms  of  Will  and  Purpose.  We  do  not  indeed 
say,  Our  will  causes  our  ideas.  But  we  do  say,  Our 
ideas  now  imperfectly  embody  our  will.  And  the  real 
world  is  just  our  whole  will  embodied. 

I  may  add,  at  once,  two  further  remarks  concerning 
the  more  technical  aspects  of  the  argument  by  which  we 
shall  develope  our  thesis.  The  first  remark  is,  that  the 
process  by  which  we  shall  pass  from  a  study  of  the  first 
or  fragmentary  internal  meaning  of  finite  ideas  to  that 
conception  of  their  completed  internal  meaning  in  terms 
of  which  our  theory  of  Being  is  to  be  defined,  is  a 
process  analogous  to  that  by  which  modern  mathematical 
speculation  has  undertaken  to  deal  with  its  own  concepts 
of  the  type  called  by  the  Germans  G-renzbegriffe,  or 
Limiting  Concepts,  or  better,  Concepts  of  Limits.  As  a 
fact,  one  of  the  first  things  to  be  noted  about  our  con- 
ception of  Being  is  that,  as  a  matter  of  Logic,  it  is  the 
concept  of  a  limit,  namely  of  that  limit  to  which  the 
internal  meaning  or  purpose  of  an  idea  tends  as  it  grows 
consciously  determinate.  Our  Being  resembles  the  con- 
cept of  the  so-called  irrational  numbers.  Somewhat 


38    THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

as  they  are  related  to  the  various  so-called  "  funda* 
mental  series "  of  rational  numbers,  somewhat  in  that 
way  is  Being  related  to  the  various  thinking  processes 
that  approach  it,  as  it  were,  from  without,  and  under- 
take to  define  it  as  at  once  their  external  meaning,  and 
their  unattainable  goal.  That  which  is,  is  for  thought, 
at  once  the  fulfilment  and  the  limit  of  the  thinking 
process.  The  thinking  process  itself  is  a  process 
whereby  at  once  meanings  tend  to  become  determinate, 
and  external  objects  tend  to  become  internal  mean- 
ings. Let  my  process  of  determining  my  own  internal 
meaning  simply  proceed  to  its  own  limit,  and  then  I 
shall  face  Being.  I  shall  not  only  imitate  my  object  as 
another,  and  correspond  to  it  from  without :  I  shall 
become  one  with  it,  and  so  internally  possess  it.  This 
is  a  very  technical  statement  of  our  present  thesis,  and 
of  our  form  of  Idealism,  —  a  statement  which  only  our 
later  study  can  justify.  But  in  making  that  statement 
here,  I  merely  call  attention  to  the  fact  that  the  process 
of  defining  limits  is  one  which  mathematical  science 
has  not  only  developed,  but  in  large  measure,  at  the 
present  time,  prepared  for  philosophical  adaptation,  so 
that  to  view  the  concept  of  Being  in  this  light  is  to 
approach  it  with  an  interest  for  which  recent  research 
has  decidedly  smoothed  the  way.  We  shall  meet  both 
with  false  ways  of  defining  the  limit,  and  with  true 
ways. 

My  second  remark  is  closely  related  to  the  first,  but 
is  somewhat  less  technical,  and  involves  a  return  to  the 
practical  aspects  of  our  intended  theory.  I  have  just 
said  that  the  development  of  the  conception  of  an  idea 


INTRODUCTION:  THE  RELIGIOUS  PROBLEMS        &J 

whose  internal  meaning  is  fully  completed,  and  whose 
relation  to  Being  is  even  thereby  defined,  will  involve 
a  discussion  of  the  way  in  which  our  internal,  our  frag- 
mentary finite  meanings,  as  they  appear  in  our  flying 
moments,  are  to  attain  a  determined  character  or  are  to 
become,  as  Hegel  would  say,  bestimmt,  so  as  to  pass  from 
vagueness  to  precision.  Our  theory,  as  you  already  see, 
will  identify  finite  ignorance  of  Reality  with  finite  vague- 
ness of  meaning,  will  assert  that  the  very  Absolute,  in 
all  its  fulness  of  life,  is  even  now  the  object  that  you 
really  mean  by  your  fragmentary  passing  ideas,  and  that 
the  defect  of  your  present  human  form  of  momentary 
consciousness  lies  in  the  fact  that  you  just  now  do  not 
know  precisely  what  you  mean.  Increase  of  knowledge, 
therefore,  would  really  involve  increase  of  determination 
in  your  present  meaning.  The  universe  you  have  always 
with  you,  as  your  true  internal  meaning.  Only  this, 
your  meaning,  you  now,  in  view  of  the  defect  of  your 
momentary  form  of  consciousness,  realize  vaguely, 
abstractly,  without  determination.  And,  as  we  have 
further  asserted,  this  indetermination  of  your  ideas  also 
involves  a  hesitant  indeterminateness  of  your  momentary 
will,  a  vagueness  of  conscious  ideal  as  well  as  of  idea, 
a  failure  not  only  to  possess,  but  wholly  to  know  what 
you  want.  To  pass  to  your  real  and  completed  meaning, 
to  the  meaning  implied  in  this  very  moment's  vagueness, 
would  be  a  passage  to  absolute  determinateness.  So  to 
pass  would  therefore  be  to  know  with  full  determination 
truths  of  an  often  desired  type,  truths  such  as :  What 
you  yourself  are ;  and,  who  you  are,  as  this  individual ; 
what  this  individual  physical  fact  now  before  you  ia 


40    THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

Yes,  it  would  be  to  know  what  the  whole  individual 
Being  called  the  World  is;  and  who  the  Individual  of 
Individuals,  namely  the  Absolute,  or  God  himself,  is. 
Just  such  final  determinateness,  just  such  precision, 
definiteness,  finality  of  meaning,  constitutes  that  limit 
of  your  own  internal  meaning  which  our  theory  will 
hereafter  seek  to  characterize.  And  so  my  present  re- 
mark hereupon  is  that,  in  following  our  enterprise  of 
defining  Being,  we  shall  not  be  looking  for  mere  abstract 
principles,  but  we  shall  be  seeking  for  the  most  concrete 
objects  in  the  world,  namely  for  Individual  Beings, 
and  for  the  system  that  links  them  in  one  Indi- 
vidual Whole,  —  for  Individuals  viewed  as  the  limits 
towards  which  all  ideas  of  universal  meanings  tend,  and 
for  the  Absolute  as  himself  simply  the  highest  fulfilment 
of  the  very  category  of  Individuality,  the  Individual  of 
Individuals. 

Will,  meaning,  individuality,  these  will  prove  to  be 
the  constant  accompaniments  and  the  outcome  of  our 
whole  theory  of  ideas,  of  thought,  and  of  being.  And 
in  the  light  of  these  remarks  we  may  now  be  able  to 
anticipate  more  precisely  the  form  of  doctrine  to  which 
these  lectures  are  to  be  devoted. 

Idealism  in  some  sense  is  indeed  familiar  in  modern 
doctrine.  And  familiar  also  to  readers  of  idealistic 
literature  is  some  such  assertion,  as  that  the  whole  of 
Reality  is  the  expression  of  a  single  system  of  thought,  the 
fulfilment  of  a  single  conscious  Purpose,  or  the  realm  of 
one  internally  harmonized  Experience.  But  what  the 
interested  learners  ask  of  idealistic  teachers  to-day  is,  as 
you  are  all  aware,  a  more  explicit  statement  as  to  just 


INTRODUCTION:   THE  RELIGIOUS  PROBLEMS       41 

how  Thought  and  Purpose,  Idea  and  Will,  and  above  all 
finite  thought  and  will,  and  absolute  thought  and  will, 
are,  by  any  idealist,  to  be  conceived  as  related  to  each 
other.  My  definitions  in  the  foregoing  have  been 
deliberately  intended  to  prepare  the  way  for  our  later 
direct  dealing  with  just  these  issues.  An  idea,  in  the 
present  discussion,  is  first  of  all  to  be  defined  in  terms 
of  the  internal  purpose,  or,  if  you  choose,  in  terms  of  the 
Will,  that  it  expresses  consciously,  if  imperfectly,  at  the 
instant  when  it  comes  to  mind.  Its  external  meaning, 
its  externally  cognitive  function  as  a  knower  of  outer 
Reality,  is  thus  in  these  lectures  to  be  treated  as  ex- 
plicitly secondary  to  this  its  internal  value,  this  its 
character  as  meaning  the  conscious  fulfilment  of  an  end, 
the  conscious  expression  of  an  interest,  of  a  desire,  of  a 
volition.  To  be  sure,  thus  to  define,  as  we  shall  see,  is  not 
to  separate  knowing  from  willing,  but  it  is  rather  to 
lay  stress,  from  the  outset,  upon  the  unity  of  knowledge 
and  will,  first  in  our  finite  consciousness,  and  later,  as  we 
shall  see,  in  the  Absolute.  Our  present  statement  of  our 
doctrine  is  therefore  not  to  be  accused,  at  any  point,  of 
neglecting  the  aspect  of  value,  the  teleological,  the  voli- 
tional aspect,  which  consciousness  everywhere  possesses. 
We  shall  reach  indeed  in  the  end  the  conception  of  an 
Absolute  Thought,  but  this  conception  will  be  in  explicit 
unity  with  the  conception  of  an  Absolute  Purpose. 
Furthermore,  as  we  have  just  asserted,  we  shall  find  that 
the  defect  of  our  momentary  internal  purposes,  as  they 
come  to  our  passing  consciousness,  is  that  they  imply  an 
individuality,  both  in  ourselves  and  in  our  facts  of 
experience,  which  we  do  not  wholly  get  presented  to  our- 


42    THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

selves  at  any  one  instant.  Or  in  other  words,  we  finite 
beings  live  in  the  search  for  individuality,  of  life,  of 
will,  of  experience,  in  brief,  of  meaning.  The  whole 
meaning,  which  is  the  world,  the  Reality,  will  prove  to 
be,  for  this  very  reason,  not  a  barren  Absolute,  which 
devours  individuals,  not  a  wilderness  such  as  Meister 
Eckhart  found  in  God,  a  Stille  Waste,  da  Nieman 
heime  ist,  a  place  where  there  is  no  definite  life,  nor  yet 
a  whole  that  absorbs  definition,  but  a  whole  that  is  just  to 
the  finite  aspect  of  every  flying  moment,  and  of  every 
transient  or  permanent  form  of  finite  selfhood,  —  a  whole 
that  is  an  individual  system  of  rationally  linked  and  de- 
terminate, but  for  that  very  reason  not  externally  deter- 
mined, ethically  free  individuals,  who  are  nevertheless  One 
in  God.  It  is  just  because  all  meanings,  in  the  end,  will 
prove  to  be  internal  meanings,  that  this  which  the  inter- 
nal meaning  most  loves,  namely  the  presence  of  concrete 
fulfilment,  of  life,  of  pulsating  and  originative  will,  of 
freedom,  and  of  individuality,  will  prove,  for  our  view, 
to  be  of  the  very  essence  of  the  Absolute  Meaning  of 
the  world.  This,  I  say,  will  prove  to  be  the  sense  of  our 
central  thesis;  and  here  will  be  a  contrast  between  our 
form  of  Idealism  and  some  other  forms. 

And  thus,  in  this  wholly  preliminary  statement,  I  have 
outlined  our  task,  have  indicated  its  relation  to  the  prob- 
lems of  religion,  have  suggested  its  historical  affiliations, 
and  have,  in  a  measure,  predicted  its  course.  I  have  de- 
fined in  general  the  problem  of  the  relation  of  the  World 
as  Idea  to  the  World  as  Fact,  and  have  stated  our  issue 
as  precisel}*  this  relation  between  Ideas  and  Reality.  In 
order  to  assist  in  clarifying  our  undertaking,  I  have  also 


INTRODUCTION:  THE  RELIGIOUS  PROBLEMS       43 

given  a  general  definition  of  what  an  idea  is,  and  have 
stated  the  logical  contrast  between  the  consciously  inter- 
nal and  the  apparently  external  meaning  of  any  finite  idea. 
And  finally  I  have  asserted  that,  in  dealing  with  the  prob- 
lem as  to  how  internal  and  external  meaning  can  be 
reduced  to  a  consistent  whole,  we  shall  be  especially 
guided  to  fruitful  reflection  upon  the  final  relation  of  the 
World  and  the  Individual.  This,  then,  is  our  programme. 
The  rest  must  be  the  actual  task. 

I  am  not  unaware  how  valueless,  in  philosophy,  are 
mere  promises.  All,  in  this  field,  must  turn  upon  the 
method  of  work.  The  question  in  philosophy  is  not  about 
the  interest  or  the  hopefulness  of  your  creed,  but  about 
your  rational  grounds  for  holding  your  convictions.  I 
accept  the  decidedly  strict  limitations  imposed  by  this 
consideration,  and  shall  try,  when  we  come  to  the  heart  of 
our  critical  and  constructive  task,  to  be  as  explicit  as  the 
allotted  time  permits,  both  in  expounding  the  precise  sense 
of  the  doctrine  now  loosely  and  dogmatically  sketched  in 
the  foregoing  statement,  and  in  explaining  the  grounds 
that  lead  me  to  prefer  it,  as  a  solution  both  of  logical  and 
of  empirical  problems,  to  its  rivals.  But  the  way  of  detailed 
argument  is  long,  and  the  outlook  of  the  whole  enterprise 
may  often  seem,  as  we  proceed  with  our  difficulties,  dark 
and  perplexing.  Introductions  also  have  their  rights  ; 
and  I  have  meant  in  these  opening  words  merely  to  re- 
count the  dream  of  which  what  follows  must  furnish  both 
the  interpretation  and,  in  a  measure,  the  justification. 


LECTUKE   II 


LECTURE   II 

REALISM  AND  MYSTICISM  IN   THE  HISTORY  OF  THOUGHT 

IN  our  opening  lecture  the  general  plan  of  these  discus- 
sions was  sketched.  Of  this  former  lecture  we  now  need 
recall  but  a  single  feature.  We  are  to  found  our  view 
of  the  Philosophy  of  Religion  upon  a  treatment  of  the 
most  fundamental  problems  of  the  Theory  of  Being. 
Without  a  further  apology  for  our  plan,  and  without  fur- 
ther preliminary  statement  of  its  prospects  and  methods, 
we  now  proceed  directly  to  our  task  itself. 


We  express  in  language,  by  means  of  verbs,  adjectives, 
and  equivalent  expressions,  what,  as  to  their  qualities, 
things  are,  what  they  do,  and  in  what  relation  they  stand. 
But  in  addition  to  such  expressions,  by  which  we  qualify, 
describe,  compare,  and  distinguish  the  various  objects  that 
we  observe  and  think  about,  we  have  certain  other  expres- 
sions by  means  of  which  we  assert  that  given  objects  are, 
or  are  real,  rather  than  are  not,  or  are  unreal.  Now,  in 
technical  phrase,  we  shall  hereafter  call  the  expressions 
of  the  latter  type  the  ontological  vocabulary  of  our  lan- 
guage. Hard  as  it  is  to  grasp  or  to  render  articulate  the 
conception  of  Being,  the  vocabulary  used,  at  least  in  the 
language  of  the  Indo-European  family,  for  the  purpose 
of  asserting  that  a  thing  is,  is  so  rich,  so  living,  so-  flexible 

47 


48    THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

a  vocabulary,  as  to  remind  us  at  every  turn  how  familiar 
in  the  concrete  is  the  idea  of  Real  Being  even  to  the  most 
unlearned  mind.  Let  us  forthwith  exemplify.  It  is  for 
common  sense  one  thing  to  have,  as  they  say,  an  idea  "  in 
your  head,"  and  quite  another  thing  to  believe  steadfastly 
that  this  idea  corresponds  to  a  "real  outer  fact."  It  is 
one  thing  to  read  a  "  rumor  "  in  a  current  newspaper.  It 
is  quite  another  thing  to  be  sure  that,  in  truth,  as  they 
say,  the  rumor  is  "so."  Now,  in  all  these  cases,  the  con- 
trast between  any  plan  and  its  actual  fulfilment,  between 
the  so-called  "  mere  idea  "  and  the  same  conceived  object 
when  believed  in  as  a  "real  outer  fact,"  between  the 
newspaper  "  rumor  "  and  the  same  story  if  viewed  as  that 
which  is  "  so,"  —  this  contrast,  I  say,  is  precisely  the  con- 
trast between  what  is  not  and  what  is.  The  contrast  in 
question,  as  I  insist,  is  thus  extremely  familiar,  and  of  the 
utmost  practical  importance.  You  may  observe  of  course 
at  once  that  this  contrast  is  closely  related  to  the  one  made 
at  the  last  time  between  the  internal  meaning  of  ideas, 
plans,  and  the  like,  and  their  external  meaning,  or  their 
relation  to  that  which  fulfils  or  realizes  them.  In  the 
grasping  of  just  this  contrast,  and  upon  fidelity  to  this 
distinction,  the  whole  of  the  everyday  virtue  of  truthful- 
ness appears,  in  the  world  of  common  sense,  to  depend. 
The  liar  is  a  man  who  deliberately  misplaces  his  onto- 
logical  predicates.  He  says  the  thing  that  is  not.  His 
internal  meaning  is  one  affair;  his  external  expression 
of  his  meaning  is  another,  and  contradicts  the  internal 
meaning.  Upon  a  similarly  clear  sense  of  this  same  con- 
trast, the  life  of  all  our  external  volition  seems  to  depend. 
A  plan  involves  an  idea  of  what  some  possible  object  may 


REALISM  AND  MYSTICISM  IN  THOUGHT  49 

sometime  be.  The  execution  of  the  plan,  the  voluntary 
act  of  one  charged  with  the  fulfilment  of  the  idea,  involves 
a  process  whereby  one  can  come  truthfully  to  say :  "  The 
fact  is  accomplished  :  the  plan  is  no  longer  a  mere  plan : 
that  which  was  the  object  of  the  plan  once  was  not,  but 
now  it  is.  The  '  mere  idea '  has  turned  into  reality." 

All  these  are  familiar  distinctions  of  common  sense. 
Our  language  is  thus  indeed  full  of  expressions  founded 
upon  the  contrast  between  what  is  and  what  is  not.  Our 
task  is  to  make  a  beginning  at  grasping  the  precise  sense 
of  this  contrast.  And  here  you  may  already  permit  me 
a  brief  excursion  into  the  realm  of  more  technical 
language. 

For  the  next  remark  which  our  study  of  even  our 
popular  vocabulary  here  suggests  has  already  been  implied 
in  the  foregoing  words.  Whatever  the  contrast  between 
being  and  non-being  ultimately  involves,  we  all  observe 
that  we  express  the  existence  or  reality  of  an  object  by 
saying  that  it  is,  while  when  we  tell  merely  what  a  given 
object  is,  we  do  not,  in  so  far,  appear  to  throw  any  light 
upon  the  truth  of  the  assertion  that  the  object  in  question 
is  real.  Thus  I  can  tell  you  what  a  fairy  is;  but  in  so 
far  I  do  not  yet  tell  you  whether  a  fairy  is  in  any  given 
sense  real  or  unreal.  Now  the  distinction  thus  expressed 
is  very  naturally  stated,  in  a  familiar  technical  phrase, 
by  calling  it,  as  many  metaphysicians  do,  the  difference 
between  the  that  and  the  what,  or  between  the  existence 
and  the  essence  of  a  fairy.  In  this  phraseology  of  the 
philosophers,  the  that  refers  to  the  assertion  of  the  onto- 
logical  predicate  itself.  The  what,  also  sometimes  called 
the  essence,  refers  to  the  ideal  description  of  the  object 


50    THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

of  which  we  may  later  assert,  or  learn,  whether  it  is  01 
is  not.  Kant,  who  much  insisted  upon  this  abstraction 
of  the  what  from  the  that,  maintained  the  view  that  the 
predicate  is,  or  is  real,  or  exists,  never,  properly,  makes  any 
difference  to  the  what  of  the  object  in  question,  or  adds 
anything  to  the  essence  of  this  object.  For  a  fairy,  once 
fully  conceived  as  a  possible  live  creature,  would  change 
in  no  whit  the  what,  the  characterizing  predicates  which 
now  belong  to  fairies,  if  such  a  fairy  came,  by  a  creative 
act,  or  by  an  evolutionary  process,  into  real  existence. 
Just  so  too,  the  what,  to  use  Aristotle's  favorite  example, 
is  common  to  the  planned  house,  and  to  the  real  house 
later  built  in  conformity  to  the  plan.  The  that  of  the 
house  is  what  the  builder's  work  effects. 

I  give  this  most  elementary  of  the  metaphysical  abstrac- 
tions its  place  here  at  the  outset  of  our  discussions  merely 
to  remark,  at  once,  first  that,  as  said,  the  contrast  in  ques- 
tion corresponds  to  the  contrast  between  the  internal  and 
external  meaning  of  ideas,  and  then  that  we  are  not 
bound  to  suppose  this  abstraction  final.  As  a  fact,  my 
own  view  of  Being  will  in  the  end  turn  upon  supplement- 
ing and  transforming  the  abstraction,  which  is  itself  a 
mere  stage  on  the  way  to  insight.  But  for  the  first  we 
borrow  its  phraseology  from  language,  as  the  philosophers 
since  Aristotle  have  done,  and  we  make  its  true  meaning 
our  problem.  The  ontological  predicate  thus  appears  to 
us  as,  in  Kant's  phrase,  no  true  predicate  at  all,  since  the 
ontological  predicate  shall  make  no  difference  whatever 
to  the  conceivable  characters  of  the  object  to  which  it  is 
applied.  And,  to  add  Kant's  own  famous  example,  a 
hundred  real  dollars,  according  to  Kant,  differ  in  no 


REALISM  AND  MYSTICISM  IN  THOUGHT  51 

nameable  essential  or  logical  characters  from  a  hundred 
ideal  or  possible  dollars.  It  is  my  actual  wealth  that 
differs  according  as  I  do  or  do  not  own  the  real  dollars. 
Yet,  on  the  other  hand,  this  so  abstract  ontological 
predicate,  otherwise  viewed,  does  indeed  also  appear  as  if 
it  were  the  most  momentous  of  all  predicates,  since  pre- 
cisely the  is  and  the  is  not  somehow  are  to  express  all  the 
difference  between  the  true  story  and  the  false  rumor, 
between  the  sound  witness  and  the  liar,  between  waking 
life  and  dream,  between  history  and  myth,  —  yes,  be- 
tween the  whole  world  and  nothing  at  all.1 

1  Human  thought  must  first  sunder,  in  order  perhaps  later  to  reunite. 
One  historical  result  of  the  present  mode  of  abstractly  contrasting  the 
ontological  predicate  with  all  the  other  predicates  of  objects,  was  that 
first,  Aristotle,  and  later  the  scholastic  text-books,  sometimes  attempted 
a  sort  of  external  union,  under  one  abstractly  common  name,  of  the  very 
aspects  thus  first  so  carefully  divided.  In  consequence  the  term  "  Being  " 
often  gets  a  usage  that  in  passing  I  have  merely  to  mention.  The  scho- 
lastic text-books,  namely,  as  for  instance  the  Disputations  of  Suarez,  em- 
ploy our  terms  much  as  follows.  Being  (ens),  taken  quite  in  the  abstract, 
such  writers  said,  is  a  word  that  shall  equally  apply  both  to  the  what  and 
to  the  that.  Thus  if  I  speak  of  the  being  of  a  man,  I  may,  according  to 
this  usage,  mean  either  the  ideal  nature  of  a  man,  apart  from  man's 
existence,  or  the  existence  of  a  man.  The  term  "Being"  is  so  far  in- 
different to  both  of  the  sharply  sundered  senses.  In  this  sense  Being 
may  be  viewed  as  of  two  sorts.  As  the  what  it  means  the  Essence  of 
things,  or  the  Esse  Essentice.  In  this  sense,  by  the  Being  of  a  man,  you 
mean  simply  the  definition  of  what  a  man  ?.s  an  idea  means.  As  the 
that,  Being  means  the  Existent  Being,  or  Esse  Existential.  The  Esse 
Existentice  of  a  man,  or  its  existent  being,  would  be  what  it  would  possess 
only  if  it  existed.  And  so  the  scholastic  writers  in  question  always  have 
to  point  out  whether  by  the  term  Ens,  or  Being,  they  in  any  particular 
passage  are  referring  to  the  what  or  to  the  that,  to  the  Esse  Essentise 
or  to  the  Esse  Existentise.  On  occasion,  Scholastic  usage  also  distin- 
guishes Reality  from  Existence,  by  saying  that  the  essence  of  a  not  yet 
existing,  but  genuine  future  fact  can  be  called  in  some  sense  Real,  apart 


52    THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

This  fragmentary  technical  digression  as  to  our  terms 
thus  ended,  we  return  for  a  moment  to  popular  speech. 

Language,  as  commonly  used,  does  not  leave  us  alto- 
gether to  the  mercy  of  the  perplexing  separation  of  the 
ontological  predicate  from  all  the  other,  from  what  Kant 
called  the  true  predicates  of  objects.  The  abstraction  of 
the  what  and  the  that  grew  up  slowly  in  men's  minds  :  it  is 
seldom  even  now  consciously  completed  in  the  minds  of  any 
but  technical  thinkers.  As  a  fact,  very  many  words  and 
phrases  which  have  an  obvious  reference  to  the  what  have 
gradually  come  to  be  used,  in  the  popular  ontological 
vocabulary,  as  means  of  indicating  that  an  object  is  real. 
Of  these  many  popular  ways  of  expressing  reality,  three 
classes,  just  here,  especially  interest  us,  because  they  are 
preliminary  hints,  so  to  speak,  of  our  various  more  techni- 
cal conceptions  of  Being. 

And  first,  then,  in  various  tongues,  we  find  used  for 

from  Existence,  and  that  in  general  one  can  distinguish  Real  Essences 
from  mere  figments. 

But  I  have  to  mention  this  technical  usage  only  to  say  at  once  that 
we  ourselves  shall  be  little  troubled  by  it.  In  these  lectures  I  shall 
always  mean  by  Being  the  Real  Being  of  things,  the  that.  Nor  shall  I 
try  to  make  any  systematic  difference  in  usage  between  Reality  and 
Existence,  or  the  adjectives  real  and  existent.  So  long  as  the  what 
and  the  that  remain  abstractly  sundered  in  our  investigation  we  shall 
call  the  what  the  essence,  or  again,  the  idea  taken  abstractly  in  its  in- 
ternal meaning.  By  contrast,  the  that,  the  Real  Being  of  things,  will 
at  this  stage  appear  to  us  as  corresponding  to  what  we  at  the  last  time 
called  the  External  Meaning  of  our  ideas.  But  by  and  by  we  shall  indeed 
learn  that  this  whole  sundering  of  the  what  and  the  that  is  a  false  abstrac- 
tion, —  a  mere  necessary  stage  on  the  way  to  insight.  We  shall  also  find 
that  objects  can  be  Real  in  various  degrees ;  but  we  shall  not  try,  as 
many  writers  do,  to  speak  only  of  certain  grades  of  Reality  as  Existent. 
We  shall  use  the  latter  terms  interchangeably. 


REALISM  AND  MYSTICISM  IN  THOUGHT  53 

declaring  the  reality  of  objects  certain  forms  of  speech 
whose  notable  feature  lies  in  their  telling  us  that  their 
object  is  to  be  seen,  or  is  at  hand,  or  can  be  found,  or  is 
marked,  or  is  plain,  or  stands  out,  or  is  there,  or,  as  the 
Germans  also  say,  is  vorhanden;  while  the  unreal  has  no 
standing,  or  is  not  at  hand,  or  is  not  to  be  found,  or  is  not 
there.  These  expressions  bring  the  real  being  of  an  object 
into  close  relations  with  the  sharpness,  nearness,  clearness, 
or  mere  presence,  of  our  experience  of  this  object.  They 
accordingly  often  imply  that  the  object  seems  more  or  less 
accidental.  It  haps,  it  chances,  —  these  are  phrases  thus 
frequently  employed  as  the  means  of  telling  that  an  object 
is.  "  You  may  think  that  there  is  no  hereafter,  but  there 
happens  to  be  one,"  —  so  a  preacher  may  say  to  a  scoffer. 
The  common  feature  of  these  popular  expressions  is  that 
they  lay  stress  upon  what  the  philosophers  call  the 
immediacy  of  real  facts,  as  the  most  marked  sign  of  their 
reality.  For  the  immediate,  such  as  light  or  sound  or 
pain,  just  happens  to  be  found,  or  is  given  as  a  fact. 

A  second  class  of  expressions,  however,  in  very  strong 
contrast  to  the  first  class,  declares  that  an  object  is  real,  not 
by  virtue  of  its  mere  presence  or  obviousness,  but  in  so  far 
as  it  is  deeper  than  what  is  visible,  or  in  so  far  as  it  has 
foundation,  solidity,  permanence,  interior  constitution,  pro- 
fundity of  meaning.  Much  of  the  language  here  in 
question  takes  the  form  of  metaphors.  What  merely 
seems  is  a  rind  or  husk;  what  is  real  is  the  core  or  kernel 
of  things.  "  These  but  seem,"  says  Hamlet,  "  for  these 
are  tokens  that  a  man  might  feign,  but  I  have  that  within 
which  passeth  show."  Other  metaphors,  in  ancient 
tongues  of  our  Indo-European  family,  indentify  to  be  with 


54    THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

to  breathe  or  to  dwell.  The  real  also  in  general  lives; 
for  it  is  internally  self-sustaining,  as,  to  a  more  primitive 
mind,  natural  life  may  seem  to  be.  And  breathing  is  a 
well-known  token  of  life.  So  to  breathe  is  to  be.  The 
unreal  again  is  like  a  wanderer  or  a  stranger.  But  the 
real  abides  in  its  own  house.  So  to  be  real  is  to  dwell. 
Or  again  the  real  is  the  result  of  principles,  it  is  what 
has  grown.  It  is  the  outcome  and  goal  of  processes.  It 
is  both  necessary  and  abiding.  All  such  notions  are 
easy  to  illustrate  by  the  ontological  phraseology  of 
various  tongues. 

A  third  type  of  popular  expressions  gives  us  still  an- 
other view  of  what  it  is  to  be.  According  to  this  por- 
tion, as  it  were,  of  the  mere  folk-lore  of  being,  to  be 
real  means  above  all  to  be  genuine  or  to  be  true.  One 
sees  this  meaning,  by  contrast,  in  the  very  many  popular 
names  for  objects  whose  unreality  and  illusoriness  has 
once  been  detected.  Such  an  unreal  object  may  be  called, 
if  it  is  better  than  the  objects  believed  to  be  real,  an 
Ideal;  but  most  of  the  numerous  appellatives  for  the 
unreal  objects  are  terms  of  reproach :  such  an  unreality 
is  an  appearance,  a  delusion,  a  sham,  a  myth,  a  fraud, 
a  phantasm,  an  imitation,  a  lie.  By  contrast  the  real  is 
what  you  can  depend  upon.  It  is  genuine,  no  mere 
imitation.  It  is  true. 

II 

And  thus  we  have  indicated,  although  by  no  means 
exhausted,  the  scope  of  the  ontological  speech  of  the 
people.  To  be  immediate,  or,  on  the  other  hand,  to  be 
well  founded  in  what  is  not  immediate,  and,  thirdly,  to  be 


REALISM  AND  MYSTICISM  IN  THOUGHT  55 

genuine  and  true,  —  these  seem  to  be  the  three  principal 
conceptions  of  what  it  is  to  be  real  in  the  popular  on- 
tology. Technical  metaphysic,  like  all  other  learned 
enterprises,  has  its  foundations  in  just  such  linguistic 
folk-lore,  so  to  speak,  as  the  foregoing  ;  and  one  easily 
misapprehends  the  philosophers  if  one  fails  to  observe 
whence  they  got  their  vocabulary.  As  Teichmuller,  in 
the  introduction  to  his  own  essay  on  metaphysics  well 
says,  the  Aristotelian  theory  of  Being  is  founded  in  part 
upon  a  series  of  grammatical  and  lexicographical  com- 
ments upon  the  forms  of  speech  used  in  Greek  language. 
All  the  more  philosophical  conceptions  of  being  are  due, 
in  part,  to  an  attempt  to  take  note  of  the  same  aspects  of 
human  experience  which  the  three  classes  of  popular 
ontological  predicates  have  from  an  early  stage  recog- 
nized. And,  as  a  fact,  the  ontological  concepts  are 
limited  in  their  range  of  variation  by  a  situation  in  which 
we  all  find  ourselves,  and  of  which  the  foregoing  vari- 
ations of  the  popular  vocabulary  have  already  reminded 
us.  It  is  necessary,  as  we  pass  to  the  more  technical 
realm,  to  sketch,  in  outline,  what  this  familiar  situation 
is.  For  the  problem  about  Being  is,  like  all  other  human 
problems,  first  of  all  a  problem  of  experience,  and  of 
distinctly  practical  needs. 

We  all  of  us,  from  moment  to  moment,  have  ex- 
perience. This  experience  comes  to  us,  in  part,  as  brute 
fact  :  light  and  shade,  sound  and  silence,  pain  and  grief 
and  joy,  — all  these,  in  part,  i.e.  in  one  of  their  universal 
aspects,  are  just  data  of  sense,  of  emotion,  of  inner  life  in 
general.  These  given  facts  flow  by  ;  and,  were  they  all, 
our  world  would  be  too  much  of  a  blind  problem  for  us 


56    THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

even  to  be  puzzled  by  its  meaningless  presence.  Now, 
in  so  far,  we  have  what  is  called  merely  immediate  ex- 
perience, that  is,  experience  just  present,  apart  from 
definition,  articulation,  and  in  general  from  any  insight 
into  its  relationships.  But  that  is  not  all.  In  addition, 
we  all,  when  awake  and  thoughtful,  find  present  what  one 
might  call  more  or  less  richly  idealized  experience,  ex- 
perience that,  in  addition  to  its  mere  presence,  possesses 
Meaning.  On  this  side  of  our  lives  we  are  aware  of  the 
series  of  mental  processes  called  Ideas.  These  ideas  have 
the  character  of  presenting,  in  a  more  or  less  incomplete 
but  never  perfect  way,  what,  at  the  last  time,  we  called 
the  fulfilment  of  purpose,  the  embodied  inner  meaning 
present  to  us  at  any  instant.  In  so  far  as  these  ideas  fill 
our  moments,  the  life  within  is  thus  lighted  up  with 
meaning.  But  now,  in  any  one  of  these  our  flying  pres- 
ent moments,  such  meaning  is  never  fully  possessed. 
Whatever  our  business  or  our  doctrine,  we  all  endlessly 
war  against  the  essential  narrowness  of  our  conscious 
field.  We  live  looking  for  the  whole  of  our  meaning. 
^  And  this  looking  constitutes  the  process  called  thinking. 
In  general,  this  process  is  involved  in  a  curious  conflict 
with  these  brute  facts  which  constitute  the  mere  im- 
mediacy aforesaid.  These  facts  themselves,  in  so  far  as 
they  remain  merely  immediate,  are  an  obstacle  to  the 
idealizing  process.  We  say  that  they  confuse  or  puzzle 
us.  On  the  other  hand,  these  very  facts,  on  occasion, 
may  arise  in  consciousness  only  to  fuse  at  once  or  very 
quickly  with  our  ideas.  This  is,  for  instance,  the  case 
whenever  we  accomplish  a  voluntary  act,  and  at  the  same 
time  approvingly  perceive,  through  our  senses,  the  outer 


REALISM  AND  MYSTICISM  IN  THOUGHT  57 

results  of  our  act.  It  is  also  the  case  wherever  we  look 
for  an  expected  object,  and  looking  find  the  object.  In 
such  instances  the  realm  of  the  ideal  appears  to  us  con- 
stantly to  extend.  We  then  say  either  that  we  control 
facts  by  our  will,  or  else  that  we  confirm  our  intellectual 
expectations  as  we  go.  Or  again,  we  may  succeed  in 
recognizing  and  interpreting  the  immediate  data  in  terms 
of  our  ideas.  In  such  cases  we  feel  at  home  in  our  world. 
But  when  the  data,  as  so  often  happens,  remain  obdurate, 
decline  to  be  recognized,  disappoint  expectations,  or  refuse 
our  voluntary  control,  then,  whatever  our  theory  of  the 
universe,  and  whatever  our  practical  business  may  be,  we 
have  on  our  hands  some  instance  of  the  endless  finite  con- 
flict of  mere  experience  and  mere  idea.  These  two  as- 
pects of  our  lives,  the  immediate  aspect  and  the  ideal 
aspect,  then  show  themselves  in  sharp  contrast.  Ideal 
meditation  and  brute  immediacy  stand  in  opposition  to 
each  other.  We  then  know  our  finitude,  and  we  are  ' 
inwardly  disquieted  thereby.  Such  disquietude  is  our 
almost  normal  experience  as  finite  wanderers.  The  situa- 
tion may  be  one  of  private  toil  or  of  public  controversy, 
of  practical  struggle  or  of  theoretical  uncertainty ;  but 
in  any  such  case,  amid  the  endless  variety  of  our  lives, 
the  conflict  retains  essentially  and  profoundly  similar 
features,  —  purpose  at  war  with  fortune,  idea  with  datum, 
meaning  with  chaos,  —  such  is  the  life  of  our  narrow 
flickering  moments,  and  in  so  far  as  we  are  indeed 
finite,  in  so  far  as  our  will  wins  not  yet  its  whole  bat- 
tle, our  intellect  grasps  not  the  truth  that  it  seeks. 

Practically,  this  conflict  has  other  names ;  but  viewing 
it  theoretically,  namely,  with  reference  to  the  contents 


58    THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

and  relationships  involved,  we  call  this  conflict  the  effort 
of  Thought  to  comprehend  Being.  By  Thought  we  here 
mean  the  sum  total  of  the  ideas,  this  whole  life  of  inner 
meanings,  in  so  far  as  it  is  precisely  the  effort  to  compre- 
hend and  interpret  the  data,  the  brute  facts  of  immediacy, 
in  terms  of  the  ideas  themselves  —  the  effort  to  win  over 
facts  to  ideas,  or  to  adjust  ideas  to  facts.  Were  the  facts 
wholly  interpreted,  they  would  fuse  with  the  ideas ;  and 
the  conflict  of  Thought  and  Being  would  cease.  But 
now,  —  Thought  it  is  which  attempts  to  recognize  the 
given  facts.  Thought  it  is  which  goes  on  when,  our 
present  ideas  failing  to  light  up  sufficiently  the  chaos 
of  immediacy,  we  look  for  other  ideas,  in  terms  of  which 
to  interpret  our  problems.  Thought  it  is  which  we  may 
regard  as  possessing  the  countless  ideal  weapons,  the 
storehouse  of  what  we  call  memories  of  our  past,  the 
arsenal  of  what  we  call  general  principles  for  the  inter- 
pretation of  fact,  the  vast  collection  of  traditional  ideas 
with  which  our  whole  education  has  supplied  us. 
Thought  possesses,  —  nay,  thought  rather  is,  this  whole 
collection  of  ideas  taken  as  in  contrast  with  facts.  The 
ideas  are  our  resources  in  the  warfare  with  immediacy, 
just  as  from  moment  to  moment  they  come  to  mind. 

So  much  then,  at  this  stage,  for  Thought.  But  what 
do  we  mean  by  Being?  The  effort  to  give  answer  to 
this  question  brings  to  light  several  possible  alter- 
natives. These  we  are  even  now  trying  to  define  more 
exactly.  Yet  all  the  alternatives  involve  a  common  char- 
acter. Being,  in  this  warfare,  that  which  is  real,  as  op- 
posed and  contrasted  to  that  which  just  now  is  merely 
suggested  to  us  by  our  momentary  ideas  as  they  fly,  and 


REALISM  AND  MYSTICISM  IN   THOUGHT  59 

which  is  not  yet  confirmed  by  facts,  —  Being,  I  say,  al- 
ways appears  in  the  conflict  and  in  the  incompleteness 
of  our  human  thinking,  as  that  which  we  first  regard  as 
real  in  advance  of  more  special  definition,  in  so  far  as  we 
call  it  Other  than  our  merely  transient  and  finite  thinking 
of  the  moment.  Our  situation,  as  finite  thinkers,  is,  as 
we  just  said,  disquieting.  We  want  some  other  situation 
in  place  of  this  one.  Our  ideas,  while  partial  embodi- 
ments of  meaning,  are  never  complete  embodiments.  We 
are  never  quite  at  home  with  our  world.  The  Other, 
then,  which  we  seek,  would  involve,  if  completely  found, 
a  situation  where  thought  and  fact  were  no  longer  at  war, 
as  now  they  are,  and  where  thought  had  finished  its  ideal 
task  as  now  it  is  not  finished.  To  define  in  advance  this 
situation,  we  must  then  form  some  more  or  less  precise 
notion  as  to  the  question :  Wherein  lies  the  defect  of  our 
present  thoughts,  both  in  themselves,  and  in  their  rela- 
tion to  facts  ? 

It  follows  that,  in  defining  this  defect  of  our  present 
situation,  in  predicting  the  character  of  the  Other  that 
we  seek,  of  the  needed  supplement,  whose  presence,  once 
observed,  would  end  the  now  insistent  conflict,  —  in  thus 
defining  and  predicting,  I  say,  we  are  limited,  as  to  our 
choice  of  alternatives,  by  the  exigencies  of  the  finite  con- 
scious situation  herewith  summed  up.  We  can  define 
the  Other,  the  true  Being,  as  that  which,  if  present  to 
us  in  this  moment,  would  end  our  conflict.  In  so  far  it 
seems  something  desirable  and  desired,  —  an  object  of 
longing.  On  the  other  hand,  we  may,  and  often  do, 
regard  Being  as  that  in  terms  of  which  our  ideas  are  to 
be  controlled,  set  right,  or,  if  necessary,  wholly  set  aside  as 


60    THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

useless.  In  so  far  Being  appears  as  a  sort  of  fate,  or  per- 
haps as  a  supreme  authority,  which  judges  our  ideas  and 
which  may  thwart  them.  On  this  side,  what  is,  is  often 
the  wwdesired,  and  may  seem  the  hopelessly  evil.  Mean- 
while, there  remain  many  ways  in  which  we  can  define 
Being  either  more  in  terms  of  Immediacy  or  else  more 
in  terms  of  Ideas.  But  Fact  and  Idea,  Immediacy  and 
Thought,  these  are  the  factors  whose  contrast  and  whose 
conflict  must  determine  what  notion  we  can  form  of  what 
it  is  to  be.  Some  conceived  union  of  elements  furnished 
by  these  two  factors  that  enter  into  our  finite  conflict 
constitutes,  for  any  theory,  the  notion  of  reality. 

And  now  at  last  we  are  ready,  having  summarized  the 
vaguer  popular  views,  and  having  seen  what  situation 
determines  the  whole  effort  to  define  Being,  —  we  are 
ready,  I  say,  to  pass  directly  to  the  alternative  concep- 
tions of  what  it  is  to  be  real  which  have  appeared  in  the 
course  of  the  history  of  philosophy. 

I  say,  these  fundamental  conceptions,  as  they  gradually 
become  differentiated  in  the  course  of  the  history  of 
thought,  are  four  in  number.  In  this  lecture  I  shall  at 
some  length  define  two  of  them.  The  others  I  shall  not 
expound  until  later  lectures,  after  a  critical  study  of  the 
first  two  has  prepared  the  way. 

But  first  let  me  name  all  the  four.  The  mere  list  will 
not  be  very  enlightening,  but  it  will  serve  to  furnish 
titles  for  our  immediately  subsequent  inquiries.  The 
first  conception  I  shall  call  the  technically  Realistic  defi- 
nition of  what  it  is  to  be.  The  second  I  shall  call  the 
Mystical  conception.  The  third  I  cannot  so  easily  name. 
I  shall  sometimes  call  it  the  typical  view  of  modern  Criti- 


REALISM  AND  MYSTICISM  IN  THOUGHT  61 

cal  Rationalism.  Just  now  I  prefer  to  name  it  by  its 
formulation,  the  conception  of  the  real  as  the  Truth,  or, 
in  the  present  day,  usually,  as  the  Empirically  verifiable 
Truth.  The  fourth  I  shall  call  the  Synthetic,  or  the  con- 
structively Idealistic  conception  of  what  it  is  to  be.  For 
the  first  conception,  that  is  real  which  is  simply  Indepen- 
dent of  the  mere  ideas  that  relate  or  that  may  relate  to  it. 
For  this  view,  what  is,  is  not  only  external  to  our  ideas 
of  it,  but  absolutely  and  independently  decides  as  to  the 
validity  of  such  ideas.  It  controls  or  determines  the 
worth  of  ideas,  and  that  wholly  apart  from  their  or  our 
desire  or  will.  What  we  "merely  think"  makes  "no 
difference"  to  fact.  For  the  second  conception,  that  is 
real  which  is  absolutely  and  finally  Immediate,  so  that 
when  it  is  found,  i.e.  felt,  it  altogether  ends  any  effort 
at  ideal  definition,  and  in  this  sense  satisfies  ideas  as 
well  as  constitutes  the  fact.  For  this  view,  therefore, 
Being  is  the  longed-for  goal  of  our  desire.  For  the 
third  conception,  that  is  real  which  is  purely  and  simply 
_Valid  or  True.  Above  all,  according  to  the  modern 
form  of  this  view,  that  is  real  which  Experience,  in 
verifying  our  ideas,  shows  to  be  valid  about  these  ideas. 
Or  the  real  is  the  valid  "Possibility  of  Experience." 
But  for  the  fourth  conception,  that  is  real  which  finally 
presents  in  a  completed  experience  the  whole  meaning 
of  a  System  of  Ideas. 

I  proceed  at  once  to  a  statement  of  the  first  two  concep- 
tions. These  two  are  the  polar  opposite  each  of  the  other. 
Their  warfare  is  very  ancient.  The  history  of  Theology 
has  been,  above  all,  determined  by  their  conflict. 


62    THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 


III 

The  first  of  the  four  is  the  best  known  of  all.  Accord- 
ing to  this  conception,  I  repeat,  to  be  real  means  to  be 
independent  of  an  idea  or  experience  through  which  the 
real  being  is,  from  without,  felt,  or  thought,  or  known. 
And  this,  I  say,  is  the  view  best  known  as  metaphysical 
Realism,  the  view  which,  recognizing  independent  beings 
as  real,  lays  explicit  stress  upon  their  independence  as  the 
very  essence  of  their  reality. 

To  comprehend  what  this  conception  of  Reality  implies, 
I  must  first  point  out  that,  of  all  our  four  views,  this  first 
one  most  sharply  and  abstractly  undertakes  to  distinguish 
the  what  from  the  that,  in  case  of  every  real  object,  and  to 
hold  the  two  aspects  asunder.  What  objects  are  in  this 
sense  real,  the  realistic  definition  does  not  undertake  in 
the  least  to  predetermine.  But  by  virtue  of  the  defini- 
tion, you  are  to  know,  as  far  as  that  is  knowable  at  all, 
wherein  consists  the  determining  feature  that  distin- 
guishes real  from  unreal  objects.  Unreal  objects,  cen- 
taurs, or  other  fictions,  ideals,  delusions,  may  be  what 
they  please.  Real  objects  may  in  their  turn  possess  any 
what  that  experience  or  demonstration  proves  to  belong 
to  them.  But  the  difference  between  real  and  unreal 
objects  is  an  unique  difference,  and  is  not  properly  to  be 
called  a  difference  as  to  the  what  of  the  real  and  unreal 
objects  themselves.  This  difference,  relating  wholly  to 
the  that,  is  a  difference  expressible  by  saying  that  ficti- 
tious objects  are  dependent  wholly  upon  ideas,  the  hopes, 
dreams,  and  fancies,  which  conceive  them  ;  while  real 


REALISM  AND  MYSTICISM  IN  THOUGHT  63 

objects  are  wholly  independent  of  any  ideas  which  may  have 
them  as  objects,  just  in  so  far  as  these  ideas  are  different 
from  their  objects. 

To  countless  and  to  endlessly  various  objects  this  first 
form  of  the  ontological  predicate  has  accordingly  been 
applied  by  the  thinkers  who  have  used  it.  Both  matter 
and  mind  have  equally  been  called  real  in  this  first  sense. 
Realism  has,  of  course,  no  necessary  tendency  towards 
Materialism,  although  the  materialists  are  realists.  Since 
all  here  turns  upon  the  ontological  predicate,  and  not 
upon  the  what  of  the  subject  to  which  a  given  realistic 
philosopher  applies  this  ontological  predicate,  you  never 
know  in  advance  but  that  a  realist's  world  may  prove  to 
be  full  of  minds.  By  way  of  illustration  of  the  varieties 
of  Realism,  I  may  refer  at  once  to  typical  entities  of 
realistic  type  which  have  appeared  in  the  course  of  the 
history  of  philosophy.  The  Eleatic  One,  and  the  Many 
of  Empedocles  or  of  Democritus  ;  the  Platonic  Ideas,  in 
the  form  in  which  Plato  defines  them  in  his  most  typi- 
cal accounts  of  their  supreme  and  absolute  dignity  as 
real  beings;  and  the  Aristotelian  individual  beings  of 
all  grades,  from  God  to  matter ;  the  Stoic  Nature  and 
the  Epicurean  atoms ;  the  whole  world  of  created  en- 
tities in  the  Scholastic  theology,  whenever  viewed  apart 
from  its  dependence  upon  God;  the  Substance  of  Spinoza ; 
the  Monads  of  Leibniz;  the  Things  in  Themselves  of 
Kant;  the  Reals  of  Herbart ;  The  Mind  Stuff  of  Clif- 
ford ;  the  Unknowable  of  Mr.  Spencer  ;  and  even  the 
moral  agents  of  most  modern  ethical  systems  of  meta- 
physics :  —  all  these  endlessly  varied  types  of  conceived 
objects,  differing  in  value  and  in  description  almost 


64    THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

without  limit,  have  been  declared  real  in  what  their 
authors  have  more  or  less  clearly  identified  with  this 
our  first  sense  of  the  word  real.  All  these  thinkers  were 
in  so  far  realists. 

Plainly,  therefore,  this  idea  of  what  it  is  to  be  real 
is  not  identical  with  any  of  the  foregoing  simpler  and 
popular  definitions  of  reality.  The  atoms,  as  we  have 
now  learned  to  define  them,  are  invisible ;  the  Eleatic 
One  is  only  to  be  known  by  thinking;  the  Platonic 
Ideas  are  above  all,  incorporeal.  On  the  other  hand, 
a  portion  (although  by  no  means  all)  of  the  ordinary 
realistic  metaphysics  which  one  meets  with  in  many 
text-books  of  special  science,  deals  with  visible  and 
tangible  objects.  The  Monads  of  Leibniz  are  Souls. 
Kant's  Things  in  Themselves  and  Herbart's  Reals,  are 
as  unknowable  as  the  Power  of  which  Mr.  Spencer 
tells  us.  Yet  to  all  these  different  sorts  of  objects, 
our  first  form  of  the  ontological  predicate  has  been 
applied  by  thinkers  who  have  had  it  more  or  less 
clearly  in  mind.  Hence  neither  visibility,  nor  any 
other  of  the  forms  in  which  the  popular  metaphysic 
conceives  immediacy,  is  adequate  to  express  the  present 
conception.  Yet  it  is  true  that  real  Being  implies,  for 
this  our  first  notion,  that  what  is  real  is  in  a  certain 
sense  given,  and  is  so  far  a  brute  fact.  Much  nearer  to 
the  present  notion  is  that  second  popular  view,  accord- 
ing to  which  to  be  real  means  to  be  the  deeper  basis, 
that  furnishes  the  ground  for  what  is  given,  or  that 
is  somehow  beneath  the  surface  of  immediate  presenta- 
tion. In  some  measure,  moreover,  our  present  form  of 
technical  doctrine  is  a  development  out  of  the  third 


REALISM   AND   MYSTICISM   IN   THOUGHT  65 

of  the  foregoing  popular  conceptions,  according  to 
which  whatever  is  real  thereby  renders  ideas  about 
itself  either  true  or  false.  In  brief,  then,  the  present 
ontological  definition  is  a  Synthesis  of  the  three  popu- 
lar conceptions,  with  stress  laid  upon  the  second,  that 
is,  upon  the  idea  that  the  real,  as  such,  is  behind  or 
beyond  the  merely  immediate  facts  of  our  experience. 

As  to  its  relation  to  that  warfare  of  thought  and 
immediacy  in  our  passing  finite  moments  of  conscious- 
ness, to  that  disquieting  conflict  of  which  I  before 
spoke,  —  our  present  form  of  the  ontological  predicate 
defines  the  Other  precisely  as  a  realm  wholly  other 
than  the  inner  states  whereby  we  know  it.  What  is, 
is  thus  independent  of  our  inner  conflict,  just  because 
this  realm  of  true  Being  is  wholly  sundered  from  the 
defects  of  our  imperfect  apprehension.  The  Real  is 
that  which  you  would  know  if  you  should  wholly 
escape  from  the  limits  imposed  upon  you  by  the  merely 
inner  life  of  your  consciousness.  As  monks  forsake  the 
world  to  win  an  abstract  peace,  so  Realism  bids  you 
forsake  what  depends  upon  your  mere  finite  inner 
apprehension,  if  you  want  to  get  at  the  independent 
truth.  As  to  the  way  of  escape,  as  to  how  to  forsake 
the  inner  conflict,  and  to  find  the  independent  reality, 
—  that,  indeed,  is  another  matter.  We  are  here  con- 
cerned only  with  the  realistic  definition  of  the  Real, 
not  with  the  realistic  Theory  of  Knowledge.  A  realist 
may  or  may  not  believe  that  he  can  thus  escape. 
What  interests  us  here  is  that  he  believes  that  he 
ought  to  escape  if  he  is  ever  to  know  the  final  truth. 

But  I  must   still  explain  a  little  the  sort  of  indepen- 


66    THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

dence  to  which  the  realistic  view  refers.  You  have  an 
idea  or  an  experience,  —  say  a  perception.  You  declare 
that  this  experience  or  idea  is  cognitive,  and  that  hereby 
you  know  something  real.  Now  the  first  of  our  four 
conceptions  of  what  it  is  to  be  real,  essentially  declares 
that  if  you  thus  know  a  real  object,  and  if  thereupon 
your  knowledge  vanishes  from  the  world,  that  vanish- 
ing of  your  knowledge  makes  no  difference,  except  by 
accident,  or  indirectly,  to  the  real  object  that  you 
know.  For  example,  you  look  at  a  real  mountain. 
You  see  it.  That  is  a  case  of  knowing  something  real. 
Now  look  away.  Your  seeing  ceases;  but  the  moun- 
tain, according  to  this  view,  remains  just  as  real,  and 
real  in  the  very  sense  in  which  it  before  was  real. 
This,  I  say,  is  what  any  genuinely  realistic  view  pre- 
supposes. Now  our  first  conception  of  reality  asserts 
that  just  this  independence  of  your  knowing  processes, 
and  of  all  such  knowing  processes,  as  is  your  seeing,  i.e. 
of  all  actual  or  possible  external  knowing  processes 
whatever,  is  not  only  a  universal  character  of  real 
objects,  but  also  constitutes  the  very  definition  of  the 
reality  of  the  known  object  •  itself ,  so  that  to  be,  is  to 
be  such  that  an  external  knower's  knowledge,  whether 
it  occurs  or  does  not  occur,  can  make  no  difference,  as 
mere  knowledge,  to  the  inner  reality  of  the  known 
object. 

A  real  object,  in  this  view,  may  then  be  a  known  or 
an  unknown  object,  or  it  may  be  sometimes  known,  and 
sometimes  unknown,  or,  above  all,  it  may  be  known  now 
by  one  person  and  again  by  another,  the  two  knowing 
it  simultaneously  or  separately.  All  that  makes  no  sort 


REALISM   AND  MYSTICISM  IN   THOUGHT  67 

of  difference  to  the  object,  if,  in  this  first  sense,  it 
is  real.  To  use  this  supposed  independence  as  a  means 
of  defining  reality,  is  the  essence  of  our  first  concep- 
tion of  being. 

Let  us  look  back  for  an  instant  at  our  three  popular 
ontological  predicates,  and  see  for  ourselves  afresh  how 
they  are  related  to  this  new  predicate.  And  first,  Is 
the  real,  in  this  new  sense,  a  given  or  immediate  fact? 
The  realistic  philosopher  answers  that  in  a  sense  it  is 
given,  although  he  often  answers  that  the  way  in 
which  it  is  given  may  go  far  beyond  anything  that  can 
be  merely  felt.  The  real,  he  says,  is  in  one  sense 
given,  or  immediate,  just  because  no  knowing  process, 
in  us  who  know  the  object,  creates,  affects,  or  other- 
wise mediates  the  known  real  object.  There  it  is,  the 
real.  You  may  "struggle  as  you  like."  It  is  a  datum. 
In  this  sense  of  being  mediated  by  nobody's  knowing, 
the  Platonic  Ideas  were  given  as  real,  although  they 
could  not  be  felt.  Hence,  they  are  so  far  as  much 
realistic  beings  as  were  Herbart's  Reals.  Yet  Realism 
often  makes  little  of  this  given  character  of  being, 
although  some  forms  of  realism  dwell  more  upon  it, 
especially  when  in  controversy  with  sceptics  and  mys- 
tics. But  secondly,  Is  the  real,  in  our  present  sense, 
also  deeper  than  what  is  merely  immediate?  Yes,  in 
a  sense  it  is,  if  you  mean  by  the  given,  merely  the 
felt,  or  the  observed,  facts  of  sense,  or  of  other  ex- 
perience. The  real,  as  the  independent,  is  as  careless 
of  }rour  immediate  feelings  as  it  is  of  the  mediation  of 
your  thinking  processes.  It  is  beyond  what  you  see, 
feel,  touch.  For  seeing,  feeling,  touch,  vanish;  but 


68    THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

reality  remains  when  unseen,  unfelt,  untouched  by  any 
external  observer.  Now  realists  usually  lay  great  stress 
upon  the  substantiality  of  the  real,  and  the  classic  doc- 
trine of  substance  was  developed  upon  the  basis  of 
this  notion  of  the  independently  real.  And  thirdly, 
Does  the  real  make  ideas  true  or  false?  Yes,  answers 
the  realist,  because  ideas,  in  trying  to  be  true,  in  try- 
ing to  shun  falsity,  seek  to  express  what  is  indepen- 
dent of  themselves,  in  other  words  seek  to  escape  from 
the  bondage  of  their  own  processes. 

So,  then,  Realism  is,  as  we  said,  a  synthesis  of  the  three 
popular  ontological  predicates,  although,  as  history  shows, 
with  a  preference  for  the  second  predicate.  Realism  is 
fond  of  substances,  of  "  inner "  or  of  "  deeper "  funda- 
mental facts,  and  of  inaccessible  universes.  Yet  some- 
times it  loves  an  ostentatious,  although  never  a  very 
thoroughgoing  empiricism.  As  to  many  other  matters, 
however,  Realism,  as  an  ontological  doctrine  about  what 
it  is  to  be,  is  neutral.  Almost  any  content  you  please 
might  belong,  as  we  have  already  said,  to  an  object  real 
in  this  first  sense.  Real  in  this  sense  might  be,  for  in- 
stance, even  a  state  of  feeling,  or  even  the  very  act  of 
knowledge  itself,  if  only  one  asserted  that  this  state  of 
feeling,  or  this  act  of  knowledge,  could  be  anyhow  exter- 
nally known,  as  an  object,  by  another  knowing  process. 
For  even  an  act  of  knowing  would  then  be  independent 
of  the  external  knowing  that  knew  this  act.  In  this 
sense,  most  psychologists  prefer,  in  their  usual  discus- 
sions, realistic  views  as  to  the  Being  of  mental  processes. 
These  processes  are  then  viewed  as  knowable,  but  are 
also  viewed  as  independent  of  the  knowledge  that  is  sup- 


REALISM  AND  MYSTICISM  IN   THOUGHT  69 

posed  to  be  able  to  know  them,  so  that  it  makes  no  direct 
difference  to  them  whether  they  are  known  from  without 
or  not.  Hence  the  objects  of  realistic  ontology  are  ob- 
jects not  necessarily  outside  of  any  knowledge  whatever, 
but  only  independent  of  any  knowing  that  is  external  to 
themselves.  A  world  of  conscious  monads  might  be,  in 
this  sense,  independently  real.  Nevertheless,  any  real- 
istic world  must  contain  some  objects  that  are  outside 
of  any  knowing  process  whatever,  since  the  relations 
between  the  various  knowing  processes  and  their  objects, 
even  in  a  world  of  conscious  minds,  would  have  to  be 
external  relations,  in  order  to  save  the  realistic  type  of 
independence.  Hence  no  realistic  world  can  be  through 
and  through  a  conscious  world.  It  must  have  some 
aspects  lying  outside  of  any  possible  knowledge. 

As  to  the  relation  which  Realism  assumes  between 
knowledge  and  its  real  object,  this  is  a  curious  relation, 
—  a  relation  whose  obviously  practical  import  at  once 
tends  to  throw  light  on  the  meaning  of  the  whole  situa- 
tion. It  is  a  relation  that  shall  make  "  no  difference " 
whatever  to  one  of  the  related  terms,  namely,  to  the  real 
object,  which  is  totally  indifferent  to  being  known  or  not 
known ;  although  this  same  relation,  while  inevitably  leav- 
ing the  other  term  of  the  relation,  namely,  the  knowing 
consciousness,  itself  a  fact  independently  existing,  makes 
all  the  difference  possible  to  the  value  of  this  other  term, 
namely,  to  the  truth  or  accuracy  of  the  knowing  con- 
sciousness, since  a  knowledge  without  a  real  object,  inde- 
pendent of  it,  is  supposed  by  the  hypothesis  to  be  utterly 
vain.  The  real  object,  in  its  independence,  is  not  even 
related  to  the  truth  or  value  of  the  poor  knowing  process, 


70    THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

as  is  the  sedate  big  dog  to  the  little  dog  when  the  latter 
barks.  For  the  big  dog  at  least  presumably  hears  the 
barking.  The  realistic  relation  of  the  knowing  being  to 
its  object  is  more  like  the  relation  of  a  horse  to  a  hitch- 
ing post,  only  that  even  here  the  horse  can  strain  at  the 
post  when  he  pulls,  while  realistic  knowing  is  absolutely 
naught  to  its  object.  By  doctrines  about  the  Will,  to  be 
sure,  the  more  ethical  amongst  the  realists  generally  try 
to  correct  the  externality  of  the  relation  between  knower 
and  object.  Knowledge,  they  say,  moves  will,  or  sets  it 
moving  itself,  and  hereupon  will  often  alters  indepen- 
dent object.  But  these  volitional  relations  are  another 
story,  although,  as  I  may  add,  they  are  fatal  to  the  con- 
sistency of  the  realistic  conception. 

IV 

And  now  for  some  hint  of  the  historical  fortunes  of 
Realism.  I  have  pointed  out  how  wide-spread  is  this 
realistic  conception  of  Being  in  the  history  of  philosophy. 
I  may  now  add  that  I  think  that  this  conception  has 
never  been  held  wholly  alone,  and  apart  from  other  con- 
ceptions of  reality,  by  any  first-rate  thinker.  The  general 
rule  is  that  any  great  system  of  philosophy  has  some 
objects  in  it  which  are  earnestly  insisted  upon  as  real, 
but  which  are  yet  obviously,  even  explicitly,  not  real  in 
the  realistic  sense,  or  which  have  a  reality  only  in  part 
definable  in  a  realistic  sense.  Thus  Aristotle's  God,  as 
viewed  from  the  side  of  the  world,  looks  at  first  like  an- 
other real  object,  whose  reality  is  wholly  of  the  indepen- 
dent type.  Yet  if  you  examine  closer  the  self-centred 


REALISM   AND  MYSTICISM  IN  THOUGHT  71 

purity  of  Being  that  Aristotle's  lonely  God  possesses, 
you  find  that,  although  in  regard  to  formal  truth  omni- 
scient, and  thus  fully  knowing  what  reality  is,  the  God 
of  Aristotle  cannot  regard  his  own  reality  as  of  any 
independent  type.  For  if  he  did  so  regard  himself,  he 
would  then  have  to  observe  that  his  reality  is  indepen- 
dent of  our  knowledge  of  him ;  and  in  that  case  he  would 
be  taking  account  of  us,  and  would  view  our  world  as 
another  than  himself.  But  such  views,  according  to 
Aristotle,  would  be  unworthy  of  God.  So  God,  who  is 
formally  omniscient,  still  knows  of  no  reality  that  is 
independent  of  the  knowledge  which  refers  to  this 
reality.  For  God,  as  Aristotle  says,  knows  only  himself. 
Just  so  Plato's  Ideas,  although  for  us  now  independent 
realities,  were  once,  in  our  previous  state  of  being,  accord- 
ing to  a  half  true  myth,  immediately  and  fully  known  by 
a  direct  intuition.  And  this  character  of  the  ideal  world, 
if  consistently  developed  at  the  expense  of  the  other 
characters,  transforms  the  reality  of  the  Ideas  of  Plato 
into  the  form  which  the  doctrine  later  assumed  in 
Plotinus  ;  but  that  is  in  part  a  mystical  form.  Nor 
are  there  lacking  other  tendencies,  in  Plato,  to  ascribe  to 
the  Ideas  a  Being  that  is  not  of  the  realistic  type.  Kant 
was  a  realist ;  but  he  invented,  in  the  world  of  Mogliche 
Erfahrung,  a  new  realm  of  objects  which  he  regards  as 
real,  and  yet  as  not  at  all  possessed  of  the  independent 
type  of  reality.  Spinoza's  Substance  is  not  only  an 
independent  reality,  but  is  also  a  mystical  Absolute. 
Notoriously,  it  keeps  two  sets  of  accounts,  or  even  an 
infinite  number.  And  hence  it  is  like  a  defaulting 
cashier.  You  never  quite  know  with  what  sort  of  reality 


72    THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

you  are  dealing  when  you  consult  its  books.  Herbart's 
world  has  in  it,  in  addition  to  its  independent  Reals, 
"  Zufallige  Ansichten  "  and  forms  of  "  Zusammen  "  without 
number.  These  are  for  our  knowledge  "wirklich"  but 
they  have  no  realistic,  that  is,  for  Herbart,  no  ultimate, 
no  simply  independent  being.  I  regard  this  series  of 
episodes  in  the  history  of  Realism  as  profoundly  instruc- 
tive. Any  realistic  world,  if  well  thought  out,  contains 
objects  that  either  are  not  real  in  the  realist's  sense,  or 
else  are  real,  not  only  in  that  sense,  but  also  in  quite 
another  sense.  This  is  what  a  student  easily  overlooks. 
But  it  is  a  fact  extremely  ominous  for  Realism. 

As  to  the  historical  and  practical  significance  of 
realistic  metaphysics  in  the  history  of  life  and  of  religion, 
one  must  say  at  once  that,  like  all  human  conceptions, 
these  various  fundamental  metaphysical  conceptions  also 
are,  in  one  aspect,  distinctly  active  and  practical  attitudes 
towards  that  Other  which  finite  thought  seeks.  For 
Realism,  the  true  meaning  of  our  ideas  is  to  be  wholly 
external.  Yet  the  internal  meaning  of  the  ideas  stubbornly 
remains.  The  realist  actually  believes  his  doctrine  be- 
cause he  finds  it  simple,  or  rational,  or  otherwise  content- 
ing to  his  inner  interests.  We  never  think  without  also 
acting,  or  tending  to  act.  When  we  think  we  will. 
We  have  then  internal  meanings.  So  far  as  we  have 
ideas  really  present  to  us,  they  embody  purposes.  Ac- 
cordingly we  shall  find  that  all  of  our  four  various 
definitions  of  the  ontological  predicate  are  expressions  of 
distinctly  universal  and  human  interests  in  life  and  the 
universe.  Man  confesses  his  practical  ideals  when  he 
defines  his  philosophical  notions. 


REALISM  AND  MYSTICISM  IN  THOUGHT  73 

And  so,  in  particular,  Realism,  in  addition  to  being  an 
effort  to  meet  the  general  problem  of  Being,  is  also  the 
product  and  expression  of  essentially  Social  motives  and 
interests.  It  is  socially  convenient,  for  purely  practical 
reasons,  to  regard  my  fellow  as  a  being  whose  mind  shall 
be  wholly  independent,  as  to  its  inner  being,  of  my  own 
knowledge  about  my  fellow.  This  view  of  the  social 
relation  is  indeed  suggested  by  well-known  experiences, 
but  in  its  ideally  extreme  forms,  it  is  warranted  by  no 
experience,  and  is  actually  contradicted  by  every  case  of 
the  communication  of  mind  with  mind.  But  we  also 
find  it  socially  convenient  to  view  the  common  objects  of 
our  human  and  social  knowledge  as  independent  both  of 
my  fellow  and  myself,  even  while  we  still  view  these 
objects  as  the  same  for  both  of  us,  and  for  all  other  actual 
and  possible  human  observers.  And  so,  in  the  end,  we 
conceive  these  common  objects,  abstractly,  as  independent 
of  all  knowing  processes  whatever.  When,  to  these  social 
motives,  we  add  that  interest  in  escape  from  our  private 
and  finite  disquietude  of  incomplete  insight  of  which  we 
before  spoke,  the  special  motives  for  the  more  abstract 
forms  of  Realism  are  in  substance  stated.  It  is  true 
that  there  is  a  deeper  and  a  very  general  motive  at  the 
heart  of  Realism,  —  a  motive  which  we  shall  only  later 
learn  to  appreciate.  This  is  the  interest  in  viewing  the 
Real  as  the  absolutely  and  finally  Determinate  or  Indi- 
vidual fact.  But  this  motive  is  present  for  Realism  in 
a  very  abstract  and  problematic  form.  And  even  this 
motive,  as  we  shall  later  see,  is  a  practical  one.  We 
believe  in  the  determinate  individuality  of  things  be- 
cause we  need  and  love  individuality.  We  can  justify 


74    THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

this   belief,  in  the  end,  only  upon    other   than    realistic 
grounds. 

In  consequence  we  may  say  that  Realism  is,  in  its 
special  contrast  with  other  views,  an  interpretation  of 
the  folk-lore  of  being  in  the  interests  of  a  social  con- 
servatism. Accordingly,  in  the  history  of  thought,  Real- 
ism is  the  metaphysic  of  the  party  of  good  order, 
when  good  order  is  viewed  merely  as  something  to  be 
preserved.  Hence  the  typical  conservatives,  the  extreme 
Right  wing  of  any  elaborate  social  order,  will  gener- 
ally be  realistic  in  their  metaphysics.  So  too  are  the 
conservative  theologians,  so  long  as  they  teach  the  people. 
Amongst  themselves,  these  conservatives,  if  deeply  reli- 
gious souls,  may  use  quite  other,  namely,  mystical  speech. 
Realistic,  too,  are  those  plain  men,  whose  only  metaphysic 
is  the  blind  belief  in  "established  facts."  Realistic  also 
are  the  tyrants.  Realism  has  lighted  the  fires  for  the 
martyrs,  and  has  set  up  the  scaffolds  for  the  reformers. 
As  to  its  most  familiar  cases  of  real  objects,  Realism  is  fond 
of  socially  important  objects.  Property  in  general,  tech- 
nical objects,  money,  mechanism,  instruments,  whatever 
can  be  passed  from  hand  to  hand,  the  solid  earth  on  which 
we  all  alike  appear  to  walk,  —  these  are  the  typical  and 
exemplary  instances  of  realistic  metaphysics.  If  you  ques- 
tion Realism,  the  realist  asks  you  whether  you  do  not 
believe  in  these  objects,  as  facts  independent  of  your  ideas. 
With  these  instances,  then,  the  realist  is  ready  to  confute 
the  objector.  The  realist  is  fond  of  insisting  upon  the 
"  sanity  "  of  his  views.  By  sanity  he  means  social  conven- 
ience. Now  reflective  thinking  is  often  socially  incon- 
venient. When  it  is,  the  realist  loves  to  talk  of  "  whole- 


REALISM  AND  MYSTICISM  IN  THOUGHT  75 

some  "  belief  in  reality,  and  to  hurl  pathological  epithets 
at  opponents.  It  is  thus  often  amusing  to  find  the  same 
thinker  who  declares  that  reality  is  quite  independent 
of  all  merely  human  or  mental  interests,  in  the  next 
breath  offering  as  proof  of  his  thesis  the  practical  and 
interesting  "  wholesomeness "  of  this  very  conviction. 

But  you  will  ask,  Have  no  realists  then  been  reformers, 
liberals,  atheists?  Yes,  I  answer,  the  pure  materialists 
have  been  realists.  But  these  more  unorthodox  realists 
are  still  what  Kant  called  Dogmatists,  partisans  of  a  tradi- 
tion preached  as  authoritative,  —  conservatives  as  to  cer- 
tain conceptions  of  a  distinctly  social,  even  if  unorthodox 
origin. 

Yet  Realism,  if  indeed  strictly  sane,  as  sanity  goes 
amongst  us  men,  is  a  view  as  falsely  abstract  as  it  is 
convenient.  This  sundering  of  external  and  internal 
meaning  is  precisely  what  our  later  study  will  show  to  be 
impossible.  As  a  shorthand  statement  of  the  situation  of 
the  finite  being,  Realism,  laying  stress  as  it  does  upon  our 
vast  and  disquieting  inadequacy  to  win  union  with  the 
Other  that  we  seek,  is  a  good  beginning  of  metaphysics. 
As  an  effort  to  define  determinateness  and  finality,  it 
is  a  stage  on  the  way  to  a  true  conception  of  Indi- 
viduality and  of  Individual  Beings.  As  a  summary  in- 
dication of  the  nature  of  our  social  consciousness,  and 
of  our  social  world,  Realism  is  indeed  the  bulwark  of 
good  order.  For  good  order,  in  us  men,  practically 
depends,  from  moment  to  moment,  upon  abstractions, 
since  we  have  at  any  one  instant  to  think  narrowly  in 
order  to  act  vigorously.  But  viewed  as  an  ultimate  and 
complete  metaphysical  doctrine,  and  not  as  a  convenient 


76    THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

half-truth,  Realism,  as  we  shall  fiiid  hereafter,  upon  a 
closer  examination,  needs  indeed  no  external  opposition. 
It  rends  its  own  world  to  pieces  even  as  it  creates  it.  It 
contradicts  its  own  conceptions  in  uttering  them.  It 
asserts  the  mutual  dependence  of  knowing  and  of  Being 
in  the  very  act  of  declaring  Being  independent.  In  brief, 
realism  never  opens  its  mouth  without  expounding  an 
antinomy. 

Its  central  technical  difficulty,  as  we  shall  later  more 
particularly  see,  and  as  Aristotle's  Metaphysics  already 
laboriously  shows  you,  is  that  wondrous  problem  of  the 
nature  of  individuality  and  as  to  the  meaning  of  uni- 
versals.  The  independent  realities  must  be  individuals, 
for  they  are  fixed  data,  finished  and  unique  in  advance 
of  any  knowing.  And  in  a  realistic  world,  as  we  shall 
find,  there  must  be  at  least  two  individuals,  independent 
of  each  other.  But  there  cannot  be  such  individuals; 
for  the  individuals  of  a  realistic  world  are  essentially 
Noumena,  objects  defined,  even  for  the  realist,  by  a  think- 
ing process.  And  mere  thinking,  when  taken  as  in  oppo- 
sition to  facts,  merely  abstract  thinking,  as  Plato  well  and 
irrefutably  observed,  —  can  define  only  universals,  and 
only  linked  systems  of  fact.  Herein  lies  the  doom  of 
Realism.  Its  laws,  as  universals,  contradict  its  facts, 
which  have  to  be  independent  individuals.  Whatever  is 
said  to  be  true  of  its  reals  is  a  conceived,  and  hence  an 
universal  truth,  linking  many  in  one.  But  its  reals  are 
not  universal,  and  are  not  to  be  linked.  Their  essence 
excludes  universality,  and  demands  mutual  independence. 
Hence,  in  the  end,  nothing  whatever  proves  to  be  true 
of  them,  History  shows  many  examples  of  this  conse- 


REALISM   AND  MYSTICISM   IN   THOUGHT  77 

quence.  The  troubled  darkness  of  the  Herbartian  realm 
of  the  Reals  is  one  such  historical  example.  In  Herbart's 
world,  in  an  uncanny  and  impossible  way,  these  Reals, 
which  can  have  nothing  to  do  with  one  another,  still, 
according  to  the  philosopher  come  "  Zusammen " ;  and 
while  nothing  can  happen  to  them,  they  preserve  them- 
selves changeless  amidst  unreal  disturbances,  by  crawling, 
as  it  were,  like  worms,  and  so  producing  a  "wirkliches 
G-eschehen"1  Well,  this  strange  metaphysical  scene,  in 
the  distracted  globe  of  Herbart's  system,  is  only  one 
instance  of  the  sort  of  thing  that  has  to  be  found  in  any 
realistic  world,  if  one  confesses  the  truth,  as  Herbart  nobly 
confessed  it. 


But  we  must  leave  this  great  problem  of  the  Realistic 
Ontology  for  a  later  and  more  detailed  study.  I  must 
proceed,  as  I  close  the  present  lecture,  to  a  sketch  of  the 
second  of  our  four  forms  of  the  ontological  predicate. 
Realism,  despite  its  prevalence,  has  long  had  a  very  an- 
cient historical  foe.  This  foe  was  originally  not  Idealism, 
in  its  modern  form,  but  something  very  different,  namel}r, 
Mysticism.  And  so  the  second  conception  of  what  it  is 
to  be  real  is  characteristic  of  that  most  remarkable  group 
of  teachers,  the  philosophical  Mystics.  Mysticism  as  a 
mere  doctrine  for  edification,  is  indeed  no  philosophy. 
Yet  a  philosophy  has  been  based  upon  it. 

While  this  second  conception  appears  to  me  to  have 
been  very  generally  misunderstood  by  most  of  the  critics 

1  See  Mr.  Br&dley's  observation  in  Appearance  and  Beality,  p.  30. 


78    THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

of  philosophical  Mysticism,  its  historical  significance,  as 
I  must  insist,  is  of  the  very  greatest.  Again  and  again 
it  appears,  as  marking  a  transition  stage  in  human  civili- 
zation. It  has  had  an  enormous  influence  on  literature. 
It  has  been  responsible  for  a  very  large  share  in  the  de- 
velopment of  all  the  great  religions.  You  cannot  under- 
stand the  history  of  religion,  without  appreciating  the 
mystical  definition  of  Being. 

As  to  the  history  of  Mysticism,  it  began  in  India,  with 
the  Upanishads  and  the  Ved&nta.  It  early  passed  to 
Europe,  and  perhaps  was  independently  rediscovered 
there.  Even  Plato's  dialogues  contain  some  hints  of  its 
spirit.  Even  Aristotle's  account  of  God's  inner  life  has 
relation  to  its  motives.  In  a  marvellous  combination  with 
realistic  and  even  with  more  concretely  idealistic  con- 
ceptions, it  forms  an  element  in  the  doctrine  of  Plotinus. 
Through  the  Neo-Platonic  school  it  passed  over  into 
Christian  theology.  Throughout  the  Middle  Ages  it 
formed  a  motive  in  the  speculations  of  the  philosophers 
of  the  School.  St.  Thomas  Aquinas  sought  to  deal  justly 
with  its  merits,  without  endangering  the  interests  of 
orthodoxy.  Meister  Eckhart,  who  was  by  training  a 
follower  of  St.  Thomas,  but  who  gradually  grew  more 
independent  of  the  master  as  he  taught,  helped  to  intro- 
duce mystic  conceptions  into  German  thinking.  The 
German  mystics  deeply  influenced  later  Protestant  theol- 
ogy. The  favorite  devotional  books  of  all  the  churches, 
and  some  of  the  best  known  of  the  religious  poets  and 
hymns,  have  continued  to  extend  the  mystical  influence 
amongst  the  laifcy  even  until  to-day.  The  unorthodox 
forms  of  Mysticism  are  almost  countless.  Schopenhauei 


REALISM   AND  MYSTICISM  IN   THOUGHT  79 

is  a  marked  modern  instance  in  a  part  of  his  doctrine,  of 
one  result  of  mystical  influence. 

Any  fair-minded  student  ought,  therefore,  to  want  to 
comprehend  what  philosophical  Mysticism  has  meant  to 
those  who  have  held  it,  and  especially  how  it  stands  op- 
posed to  Realism.  But  the  mystical  conception  of  Being 
is  one  peculiarly  liable  to  be  misunderstood.  It  is  usually 
not  rightly  distinguished  from  the  realistic  view  of 
Being.  A  student  often,  after  a  brief  study  of  this  or 
that  mystical  treatise,  accordingly  comes  away  displeased. 
"  Mere  sentimentality,"  such  a  student  often  says.  "  This 
mystical  view  seems  to  hold  that  the  only  real  object  is 
some  voiceless  and  incomprehensible  Absolute,  and  further, 
that  when  you  feel  uncommonly  entranced  or  enraptured, 
you  get  some  strange  revelation  as  to  the  nature  of  the 
real,  and  so  become  one  with  the  Absolute.  Now  it  is 
plain,"  he  continues,  "that  such  views  have  nothing  to 
do  with  common  sense,  or  with  the  physical  world,  or 
with  matter,  or  with  the  facts  of  daily  life.  For  can  one 
say  that  this  wall,  and  yonder  stars,  and  my  neighbors, 
and  even  my  own  daily  self,  are  the  Atm&n  of  the  Hin- 
doos, or  are  the  Mystic  Absolute,  or  are  anything  else 
that  you  feel  when  you  are  in  a  trance  ?  Now  these  ob- 
jects yonder  are  well  known  to  be  real.  Reality  means  for 
everybody  a  character  that  they  possess.  Hence  the  mystic 
needs  no  further  notice.  He  substitutes  his  feelings  for  the 
solid  facts.  He  is  simply  a  man  who  prefers  not  to  think 
about  reality,  but  merely  to  revel  in  his  own  feelings." 

This  criticism  is  obvious,  but  it  is  the  external  view  of 
a  realistic  metaphysic.  It  leaves  the  matter  uncompre- 
hended.  And  nobody,  I  must  hold,  can  understand  a  large 


80    THE   FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

part  of  human  nature  without  understanding  Mysticism. 
The  true  historical  importance  of  Mysticism  lies  not  in  the 
subject  to  which  it  applied  the  predicate  real,  but  in  the 
view  it  holds  of  the  fundamental  meaning  of  that  very 
ontological  predicate  itself.  No  matter  what  subject  the 
mystic  seems  to  call  real.  That  might  be  from  your  point 
of  view  any  subject  you  please  ;  yourself,  or  God,  or  the 
wall.  The  interest  of  Mysticism  lies  wholly  in  the  predi- 
cate. Mysticism  consists  in  asserting  that  to  be  means, 
simply  and  wholly,  to  be  immediate,  as  what  we  call 
pure  color,  pure  sound,  pure  emotion,  are  already  in  us 
partly  and  imperfectly  immediate.  Mysticism  asserts  that 
this  aspect  of  Being,  which  common  sense  already,  as  we 
have  seen,  recognizes  and  names  in  the  popular  ontolog- 
ical vocabulary,  must  be  kept  quite  pure,  must  be  wholly 
and  abstractly  isolated  from  all  other  aspects,  must  be  ex- 
clusively emphasized.  And  the  mystic  further  holds  that 
your  eternal  salvation  depends  on  just  such  an  abstract 
purifying  of  your  ontological  predicate.  Purer  than  color 
or  than  music  or  the  purest  love  must  the  absolute  imme- 
diate be.  Now  why  the  mystic  says  this,  is  a  matter  for 
further  study.  But  this  is  what  he  says.  He  certainly 
does  not  assert,  if  you  are  an  ordinary  realist,  that  his 
Absolute  is  real  in  your  sense,  say  real  as  money  is  real. 
The  true  issue  for  him  is  whether  the  fundamental  onto- 
logical predicate,  reality,  ought  not  itself  to  be  altered, 
altered  namely  by  a  certain  purification,  so  as  to  be  another 
predicate  than  what  ordinary  metaphysic  confusedly  takes 
it  to  be.  That  the  mystic  is  dealing  with  experience,  and 
trying  to  get  experience  quite  pure  and  then  to  make  it 
the  means  of  defining  the  real,  is  what  we  need  to  observe. 


REALISM  AND  MYSTICISM  IN  THOUGHT  81 

That  meanwhile  tlie  mystic  is  a  very  abstract  sort  of  per- 
son, I  well  admit.  But  he  is  usually  a  keen  thinker.  Only 
he  uses  his  thinking  sceptically,  to  make  naught  of  other 
thinkers.  He  gets  his  reality  not  by  thinking,  but  by  con- 
sulting the  data  of  experience.  He  is  not  stupid.  And  he 
is  trying,  very  skilfully,  to  be  a  pure  empiricist.  Indeed, 
I  should  maintain  that  the  mystics  are  the  only  thorough- 
going empiricists  in  the  history  of  philosophy. 

In  its  origin,  and  in  its  greatest  representatives,  Mysti- 
cism appears  in  history  as  the  conception  of  men  whose 
piety  has  been  won  after  long  conflict,  whose  thoughts 
have  been  dissected  by  a  very  keen  inner  scepticism,  whose 
single-minded  devotion  to  an  abstraction  has  resulted  from 
a  vast  experience  of  the  painful  complications  of  life,  and 
whose  utter  empiricism  is  the  outcome  of  a  severe  disci- 
pline, whereby  they  have  learned  to  distrust  ideas.  The 
technical  philosophical  mystics  are  the  men  who,  in  gen- 
eral, began  by  being  realists.  They  learned  to  doubt. 
They  have  doubted  through  and  through.  Whenever 
they  choose  to  appear  as  discursive  thinkers,  they  are 
keen  and  merciless  dialecticians.  Their  thinking  as  such 
is  negative.  What  they  discover  is  that  Realism  is  in- 
fected, so  to  speak,  by  profound  contradictions.  Hereby 
they  are  led  to  a  new  view  of  what  it  is  to  be.  This 
view  asserts,  first,  that  of  course  the  real  is  what 
makes  ideas  true  or  false.  But,  as  the  mystic  con- 
tinues, owing  to  certain  essential  defects  of  the  pro- 
cess of  ideation,  experience  shows  that  explicit  ideas, 
of  human,  perhaps  of  any  type,  are  always  profoundly 
false,  just  in  so  far  as  they  are  always  partial,  fleet- 
ing, contradictory,  dialectical,  disunited.  The  thinking 


82    THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

process,  just  because  it  looks  to  another  as  its  guide,  is 
always  a  dissatisfied  process,  —  like  the  finite  search  for 
happiness.  And  now,  secondly,  the  mystics  admit  that 
true  Being  is  something  deeper  than  what  usually  is  seen 
felt  or  thought  by  men.  But  they  add  that  this  is  just 
i  because  ordinary  thinking,  like  Realism,  like  money  get- 
ting, like  pleasure  seeking,  like  mortal  love  making,  al- 
ways looks  beyond  the  truly  complete  immediate,  looks 
to  false  ideas,  to  fleeting  states  that  die  as  they  pass,  and 
so  indeed  looks  to  what  the  mystic  regards  as  the  contra- 
dictory and  consequently  superficial  aspect  of  experience. 
"  Look  deeper,"  he  says,  "  but  not  deeper  into  illusory 
ideas.  Look  deeper  into  the  interior  of  experience  itself. 
There,  if  you  only  look  deeper  than  all  ordinary  and  par- 
tial immediacy,  deeper  than  colors  and  sounds,  and  deeper 
than  mortal  love,  then  when  once  rightly  prepared,  you 
shall  find  a  fact,  an  immediate  and  ineffable  fact,  such 
that  it  wholly  satisfies  every  longing,  answers  every  in- 
quiry, and  fulfils  the  aim  of  every  thought.  And  this  it 
will  do  for  you  just  because  it  will  be  at  last  the  pure 
immediate,  with  no  beyond  to  be  sought.  You  talk  of 
reality  as  fact.  Well,"  insists  the  mystic, "  here  shall  be 
your  fact,  your  datum,  an  absolutely  pure  datum.  As  pure 
it  will  fulfil  the  purpose  of  thinking,  which  always  desires 
its  own  Other,  or  in  other  words  always  really  desires  just 
the  cessation  of  all  its  strife  in  peace.  Only  in  the  imme- 
diate that  has  no  beyond,  is  such  peace.  Now  that  is  the 
Reality,  that  is  the  Soul.  Or,  to  repeat  the  Hindoo 
phrase :  That  art  thou.  That  is  the  World.  That  is  the 
Absolute.  That,  as  Meister  Eckhart  loved  to  say,  is  the 
"  stille  Wuste  der  Gottheit" 


REALISM  AND  MYSTICISM  IN   THOUGHT  83 

Now  the  essence  of  this  view  of  the  mystic  is  that  to 
be  real  means  to  be  felt  as  the  absolute  goal  and  conse- 
quent quietus  of  all  thinking,  and  so  of  all  striving.  Or 
in  other  words,  Reality  is  that  which  you  immediately 
feel  when,  thought  satisfied,  you  cease  to  think.  The 
mystic  is,  as  I  said  before,  the  only  thoroughgoing 
empiricist.  We  owe  to  him  an  illustration  of  what  an 
absolutely  pure  empiricism,  devoid  of  conventions,  and 
alone  with  immediacy,  would  mean.  Ordinary  empiri- 
cism only  half  loves  the  facts  of  experience,  as  facts; 
for  it  no  sooner  gets  them  than  it  gets  outside  of  them, 
makes  endless  hypotheses  about  them,  restlessly  tries 
to  explain  them  by  ideal  constructions,  and,  if  realistic, 
forsakes  them  altogether  to  talk  of  independent  beings. 
The  mystic  loves  the  simple  fact,  just  so  far  as  it  is 
simple  and  unmediated,  the  absolute  datum,  with  no 
questions  to  be  asked.  That  alone,  for  him,  is  worthy 
of  the  name  real.  If  it  takes  a  trance  to  find  such  a 
fact,  that  is  the  fault  of  our  human  ignorance  and  base- 
ness. The  fact  in  question  is  always  in  you,  is  under 
your  eyes.  The  ineffably  immediate  is  always  present. 
Only,  in  >your  blindness,  you  refuse  to  look  at  it,  and 
prefer  to  think  instead  of  illusions.  The  ineffably  imme- 
diate is  also,  if  you  like,  far  above  knowledge,  but  that 
is  because  knowledge  ordinarily  means  contamination 

with  ideas. 

i 

So  much  for  the  mystic's  conceptions  of  what  it  is  to 
be.  If  you  ask  what  to  think  of  this  conception,  in  com- 
parison with  the  first,  I  answer  at  once  that,  as  a  more 
detailed  study  will  show  us,  it  is  precisely  as  much  and 
precisely  as  little  a  logically  defensible  conception  as  the 


84    THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

former  conception,  that  of  Realism.  Both  are  abstrac- 
tions; both,  if  analyzed,  go  to  pieces  upon  their  own 
inner  contradictions ;  both  have  had  a  long  history ;  both 
express  a  fragment  of  the  whole  truth  about  Being; 
both  stand  for  perfectly  human  and  common -sense  ten- 
dencies, merely  pushed  to  technical  extremes.  Both  can 
only  be  judged  by  means  of  their  dialectic.  No  Theory 
of  Knowledge  can  prove  either  of  them  sound  or  unsound 
except  by  undertaking  directly  an  ontological  analysis 
and  criticism  of  what  each  one  of  them  means.  Our 
present  purpose,  however,  is  simply  to  understand  their 
general  drift  and  their  historical  importance. 

The  realistic  predicate,  independence  of  any  external 
knowing  process,  could  be  applied  to  very  various  con- 
ceived objects,  to  souls,  to  matter,  to  God,  etc.  On  the 
contrary,  the  mystic  meaning  of  what  it  is  to  be  implies 
the  absolute  and  immediate  inner  finality  and  simplicity 
of  the  object  to  which  the  predicate  real  can  be  directly 
given.  Yet,  on  the  other  hand,  this  reality  of  the  mystic, 
if  viewed  from  without  and  taken  as  a  subject,  to  which 
this  predicate  is  given  (in  other  words,  if  viewed  in  a 
way  that  the  mystic  himself  calls  a  false  way)  —  this 
reality  appears  to  you,  while  you  look  on,  to  be  only 
this  or  that  state  of  the  mystic's  mind,  his  sensations 
when  he  fasts  or  takes  ether,  his  feelings  in  a  trance,  or 
the  feelings  that  he  usually  has  towards  God,  or  towards 
life.  Hence,  as  you,  from  without,  view  the  mystics, 
and  their  faiths  and  feelings,  they  seem  diverse  enough. 
And  what  the  mystics  talk  about  as  the  Absolute,  the 
subjects  to  which  they  apply  their  predicate  real,  will 
appear  to  you,  thus  seen  from  without,  as  very  various 


REALISM  AND  MYSTICISM  IN  THOUGHT  85 

facts,  named  in  many  tongues.  Hence  the  mystics  may 
be  of  any  human  creed.  Their  doctrine  passes  "  Like 
night  from  land  to  land"  and  "has  strange  power  of 
speech."  It  says,  like  the  Ancient  Mariner:  — 

"The  moment  that  his  face  I  see, 
I  know  the  man  that  must  hear  me: 
To  him  my  tale  I  teach." 

And  the  mystic  always  thus  appeals,  in  the  ordinary 
world,  to  the  individual  man.  Hence,  in  histoiy,  the 
mystics  have  been  great  awakeners  of  the  very  spirit 
that  they  have  most  condemned,  namely  of  individuality. 
The  great  and  stormy  individuals,  like  St.  Augustine, 
or  like  Luther,  have  loved  them,  and  have  learned  from 
them,  although  in  a  sense  that  indeed  soon  transformed 
the  mystic  conception  of  Being,  for  such  men,  into  quite 
another.  Mysticism  has  been  the  ferment  of  the  faiths, 
the  forerunner  of  spiritual  liberty,  the  inaccessible  refuge 
of  the  nobler  heretics,  the  inspirer,  through  poetry,  of 
countless  youth  who  know  no  metaphysics,  the  teacher, 
through  the  devotional  books,  of  the  despairing,  the 
comforter  of  those  who  are  weary  of  fmitude.  It  has 
determined,  directly  or  indirectly,  more  than  half  of  the 
technical  theology  of  the  Church.  The  scholastic  phi- 
losophy endeavored  in  vain  to  give  it  a  subordinate  place. 
In  the  doctrine  of  St.  Thomas,  the  faithful,  in  this  life, 
are  permitted  only  a  moderate  though  respectful  use  of 
mystical  notions.  Yet  it  is  plain  that  the  God  of  St. 
Thomas's  theology  is  himself  a  mystic,  and  even  a  pan- 
theistic mystic,  since  the  Being  of  the  world,  although 
for  us  real  in  the  formal  or  realistic  sense,  makes  abso- 


86    THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

lutely  no  real  difference  to  God,  who  was  just  as  com- 
plete before  he  created  it  as  afterwards.  And  God's 
perfection  is,  for  himself,  a  perfectly  immediate  fact. 

So  much,  then,  for  a  preliminary  glance  at  the  meaning 
of  the  mystical  conception  of  reality. 

And  thus,  after  a  discussion,  at  the  outset  of  the  present 
lecture,  of  the  general  nature  of  the  ontological  predicate, 
we  have  proceeded,  first,  to  sketch  three  different  meanings 
that  the  popular  use  of  language  seems  to  have  especially 
had  in  mind  in  asserting  that  any  object  is  real.  We  have 
seen,  of  course,  that  these  three  meanings  were  fragmen- 
tary, and  more  or  less  conflicting.  We  have  turned  from 
popular  usage  to  study  the  more  elaborate  efforts  of  the 
philosophers  to  purify  or  to  harmonize  the  ontological  con- 
cepts. Of  the  four  resulting  forms  of  the  ontological 
predicate  which,  as  we  asserted,  are  prominent  in  the 
history  of  philosophy,  we  have  now  briefly  outlined  two. 
As  a  result,  we  have  before  us  definitions  of  Being  which 
are  the  polar  opposites  of  each  other.  These  are  the  real- 
istic and  the  mystical  definitions.  Realism  defines  Real 
Being  as  a  total  Independence  of  any  idea  whose  external 
object  any  given  Being  is.  Mysticism  defines  Real  Being 
as  wholly  within  Immediate  Feeling.  These  two  con- 
cepts, both  of  them,  as  I  must  hold,  false  abstractions,  are 
still  both  of  them  fragmentary  views,  as  I  also  hold,  of  the 
truth,  —  hints  towards  a  final  definition  of  the  Other,  of 
that  fulfilment  which  our  finite  thinking  restlessly  seeks. 
But  any  fair  criticism  of  either  of  the  two  conceptions  so 
far  before  us,  demands  a  separate  lecture ;  and  the  third 
and  fourth  conceptions  of  Real  Being  will  be  considered 
only  after  these  two  have  first  been  examined. 


REALISM  AND  MYSTICISM  IN  THOUGHT  87 

In  the  present  discussion  I  have  tried,  then,  merely  to 
open  the  way  towards  the  point  where  we  shall  for  the 
first  time  rightly  see  how  profoundly  a  definition  of  Being 
must  influence,  and  in  fact  predetermine,  the  issues  of 
life,  and,  in  particular,  of  Religion. 


LECTUKE  III 


LECTURE  III 

THE    INDEPENDENT    BEINGS:     A   CRITICAL    EXAMINATION 
OF  REALISM 

IN  the  foregoing  lecture,  after  naming  four  historical 
conceptions  of  Being,  we  undertook  an  exposition  and 
comparison  of  two  of  these  four  conceptions.  We  indi- 
cated the  general  attitude  towards  life  and  towards  the 
universe  which  is  assumed  on  the  one  hand  by  Realism, 
on  the  other  hand  by  Mysticism.  Before  proceeding  with 
our  list  of  the  historical  conceptions  of  what  it  is  to  be 
real,  we  may  well  pause  to  examine  still  further  these  two ; 
both  as  to  their  inner  consistency,  and  as  to  their  adequacy 
to  their  task  of  expressing  the  problems  which  beset  our 
finite  thought. 

The  present  lecture  I  shall  devote  to  a  critical  study  of 
the  realistic  conception  of  what  it  is  to  be.  The  next 
lecture  will  similarly  be  concerned  with  a  study  of  Mys- 
ticism. Then  only  shall  we  be  prepared  to  go  still  further 
in  the  effort  to  define  true  Being. 


The  realistic  conception  of  Being  is,  as  we  saw,  ex- 
tremely familiar  in  metaphysical  doctrine.  It  has  won  no 
small  favor  in  popular  discussion.  It  is  the  typical  notion 
of  socially  respectable  conservatism,  whenever  such  con- 
servatism begins  to  use  the  speech  of  technical  philosophy. 

91 


92    THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

But  the  task  of  critically  analyzing  Realism,  to  get  at  the 
essential  meaning,  is  austere  and  intricate.  Realism  easily 
assumes  its  vast  metaphysical  responsibilities;  yet  an 
examination  of  the  true  state  of  its  accounts  with  the 
truth  proves  to  be  a  very  baffling  enterprise.  The  prepa- 
ration of  a  balance  sheet  of  these  accounts,  the  definite 
presentation  of  the  assets  and  the  liabilities  of  Realism, 
has  been  repeatedly  attempted  by  philosophers  ever  since 
Plato,  and  even  before  his  time.  Of  the  difficulty  of 
the  work  let  the  proverbial  obscurity  of  metaphysical 
treatises  bear  witness;  for  very  much  of  that  obscurity 
is  due  to  just  this  problem.  As  a  fact,  all  here  depends 
upon  finally  simplifying  the  issue,  upon  leaving  out  count- 
less non-essential  problems,  which  have  been  discussed  by 
this  or  that  realistic  system  of  doctrine,  and  upon  reduc- 
ing the  central  question  of  every  realistic  view  of  the  uni- 
verse to  its  lowest  terms.  Once  thus  separated  from  its 
historical  setting,  the  mere  intricacy  of  this  problem 
indeed  vanishes ;  and  you  find  yourself  at  last  in  presence 
of  a  very  precise  issue.  But  then  your  difficulty  only 
changes  its  shape ;  for  hereupon  the  issue  brought  to  light 
by  Realism  proves  to  be  highly  abstract ;  and  the  auster- 
ity of  which  I  just  spoke  comes  to  be  felt  all  the  more  as 
the  crisis  of  the  enterprise  approaches.  Nowhere  in  these 
lectures  shall  we  have  to  undertake,  in  fact,  a  more 
abstract  investigation  than  the  one  here  immediately 
before  us.  May  the  magnitude  of  the  interests  at  stake 
justify  the  inevitable  hardships  of  just  this  day  of  our 
voyage ! 

Realism  asserts,  as  I  have  said,  that  to  be  real  means  to 
be  independent  of  ideas  which,  while  other  than  a  given 


THE  INDEPENDENT  BEINGS  93 

real  being,  still  relate  to  that  being.  If  you  suppose  a 
realist  to  be  addressing  yourself,  what  he  asserts  may 
then  be  put  into  very  much  the  following  words :  "  The 
world  of  Fact,"  he  tells  you,  "  is  independent  of  your 
knowledge  of  that  world.  This  independence,  and  the 
very  reality  itself  of  the  world  of  Fact,  are  one.  Were  all 
knowledge  of  facts  to  cease,  the  only  direct  and  logically 
necessary  change  thereby  produced  in  the  real  world, 
would  consist  in  the  consequence  that  the  particular  real 
fact  known  as  the  existence  of  knowledge,  would,  by  hypo- 
thesis, have  vanished.  Since  we  men  are  not  only  knowers, 
but  voluntary  agents  as  well,  it  is  true  that  the  vanishing 
of  our  own  knowledge  would  indirectly  alter  the  fact- 
world  in  a  negative  and  perhaps  in  a  very  important  way, 
since  all  the  real  results  that  our  will,  in  view  of  our 
knowledge,  might  have  brought  to  pass,  would  be  pre- 
vented from  taking  place.  But  this  is  a  secondary  matter. 
Primarily,  the  vanishing  of  our  knowledge  would  make  no 
difference  in  the  being  of  the  independent  facts  that  now 
we  know." 

In  brief,  to  sum  up  this  whole  view  in  a  phrase,  Realism 
asserts  that  the  mere  knowledge  of  any  Being  by  any  one 
who  is  not  himself  the  Being  known,  "  makes  no  differ- 
ence whatever  "  to  that  known  Being. 

Otherwise  stated,  Realism  involves,  as  its  consequence, 
a  characteristic  mental  attitude  towards  the  truth,  —  an 
attitude  celebrated  in  one  of  the  best-known  stanzas  of 
Fitzgerald's  Omar  Khayydm.  Realism,  at  least  in  so  far 
as  it  considers  knowledge  and  does  not  add  a  special 
hypothesis  to  explain  the  active  deeds  of  voluntary  agents, 
submits.  It  accepts  its  realities  as  facts  to  which  its  own 


94    THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

knowledge  makes  "  no  difference,"  and  so  any  group  of 
so-called  "merely  knowing"  beings,  or  of  "pure  ideas," 
can  say  to  one  another,  concerning  the  whole  world  of 
facts  beyond  themselves,  viewed  precisely  in  its  whole- 
ness :  — 

"  When  you  and  I  behind  the  Veil  are  past, 
Oh,  but  the  long,  long  while  the  World  shall  last, 
Which  of  our  Coining  and  Departure  heeds, 
As  the  seven  seas  should  heed  a  pebble  cast." 

To  be  sure,  as  I  have  indicated,  any  individual  realist 
may  chance  to  deny  altogether  that  in  all  this  he  himself 
means  to  be  at  all  practically  fatalistic.  But  in  that  case 
he  needs  a  special  hypothesis  to  explain  how  voluntary 
agents,  according  to  his  system,  can  use  their  knowledge 
to  alter  the  independent  facts.  Primarily,  knowledge 
shall  make  precisely  what  the  characteristic  phrase  of 
Realism  describes  as  "  no  difference  "  to  fact.  And  so  the 
realm  of  realistic  Being  that  is  real  beyond  your  ideas  or 
mine,  is,  in  its  wholeness,  indeed  like  a  sea,  into  which 
any  of  our  ideas  about  its  waves  fall  like  pebbles.  Wave 
and  pebble  are  primarily  to  be  viewed  as  mutually  foreign 
facts.  If  the  pebble  itself  creates  new  waves,  that  is  at 
first  sight  something  wholly  non-essential.  The  sea  is  the 
sea,  and  Being  is  indifferent  to  our  mere  ideas. 

This  statement  of  the  general  realistic  definition  of  what 
it  is  to  be  real  may  be  set  in  a  clearer  light  by  a  com- 
parison with  other  more  or  less  frequent  efforts  to  state 
the  same  historical  view.  Sometimes  Realism  is  defined 
as  the  doctrine  that  reality  is  "  extra-mental "  or  is  "  out- 
side of  the  mind."  But  this  mode  of  definition  involves 
a  space-metaphor,  and  arouses  the  question  as  to  what  the 


THE  INDEPENDENT  BEINGS  95 

world  "  outside  "  is  here  literally  to  mean.  Space,  too,  in 
its  wholeness,  may  be  viewed  by  a  realist  as  "extra- 
mental."  But  space  as  a  whole  is  obviously  not  in  any 
literal  and  spatial  sense  "  outside  "  of  anything  whatever ; 
so  that  to  call  space  "  extra-mental "  is  to  use  a  phrase  that 
ipso  facto  needs  further  interpretation.  Accordingly, 
"  extra-mental "  is  often  interpreted  as  meaning  merely 
"  other  than "  the  knowing  mind.  From  this  point  of 
view  Realism  would  mean  only  that  an  object  known  is 
other  than  the  idea,  or  thought,  or  person,  that  knows  the 
object.  But  in  this  very  general  sense,  any  and  every 
effort  to  get  at  truth  involves  the  admission  that  what  one 
seeks  is  in  some  way  more  or  less  other  than  one's  ideas 
while  one  is  seeking ;  and  herewith  no  difference  would 
be  established  between  Realism  and  any  opposing  meta- 
physical view.  Idealism,  and  even  the  extremest  philo- 
sophical Scepticism,  both  recognize  in  some  form,  that  our 
goal  in  knowledge  is  other  than  our  effort  to  reach  the 
the  goal.  Still,  then,  the  realistic  meaning  of  the  phrase 
"  outside  of  the  knowing  mind  "  would  need  an  explana- 
tion. 

But  if  this  phrase  is  next  taken  to  mean  "different 
from  or  apart  from  the  contents  of  any  or  of  all  minds," 
the  phrase  is  inadequate  to  express  what  Realism  has 
historically  meant  by  the  reality  of  the  world.  It  is 
indeed  true  that  in  any  realistic  system  there  must  be  at 
least  some  real  facts  that  find  no  place  amongst  the  con- 
tents of  any  mind  whatever.  This  is  true,  for  any  realistic 
\yview,  at  least,  with  regard  to  those  supposed  facts  called 
the  real  relations  between  knowing  beings  and  the  "  out- 
side "  objects  which  they  know.  For  those  real  relations, 


96    THE   FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

in  any  realistic  system,  are  directly  present  to  no  con- 
sciousness whatever,  and  are  thus  absolutely  different 
from  the  contents  of  any  mind.  But,  on  the  other  hand, 
it  is  not  true  that  Realism  need  regard  only  such  uncon- 
scious facts  or  beings  as  real  in  its  sense  of  the  word 
real.  You,  for  instance,  as  a  conscious  mind,  might  be 
viewed  by  a  realist  as  a  being  that  he  would  call  real  in 
his  sense.  That  assertion,  if  made  by  a  typical  realist, 
would  simply  mean  that  the  contents  of  your  mind, 
although  present  within  your  own  consciousness,  are  real 
without  regard  to  whether  anybody  else  knows  of  your 
existence  or  not.  It  is  true  that  some  realists,  namely, 
the  extreme  materialists,  have  in  their  systems  declared 
only  matter  to  be  real.  It  is  also  true  that  such  a  realist 
as  Herbart,  who  was  no  materialist,  still  defined  the  real 
beings  as  in  themselves  absolutely  simple,  and  therefore 
not  conscious  beings.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  many 
realistic  systems  have  regarded  conscious  beings  as  in  the 
realistic  sense  real ;  and  it  is  historically  possible  for  a 
realist  to  maintain  that  his  world  consists  wholly  of  con- 
scious beings,  or  even  of  mere  states  of  mind,  when  taken 
together  with  the  unconsciously  real  relationships  existent 
amongst  these  beings.  Whether  such  a  theory  can  be 
consistently  worked  out,  with  a  purely  realistic  sense  of 
what  it  is  to  be  real,  is  indeed  another  question.  But  one 
could  be  a  realist  in  his  definition  of  Being,  and  still  insist 
that  all  Being  is  in  its  nature  entirely  psychological. 

All  these  various  interpretations  of  the  phrase  "  outside 
of  the  mind,"  prove,  then,  inadequate  to  express  the  mean- 
ing of  the  realist.  There  remains  as  the  one  essential 
idea  conveyed  by  the  phrase  "  outside  of  the  mind "  and 


THE  INDEPENDENT  BEINGS  97 

as  the  one  mark  of  the  realistic  type  of  Being,  the  in- 
difference of  any  real  being  to  what  you  may,  as  knower, 
think  about  it,  so  long  as  you  yourself  are  not  the 
being  that  is  known.  The  being,  known  by  you,  may 
be  in  itself  a  mere  state  of  consciousness  in  the  mental 
life  of  your  neighbor.  But  it  is  a  realistic  being  so  long 
as  it  is  supposed  to  be  quite  independent  of  your  knowl- 
edge, and  so  undetermined  by  your  knowledge.  If 
you  think  the  truth,  so  much  the  better  for  your 
knowledge.  But  if  you  or  any  other  knower  chance  to 
think  error,  or  chance  even  to  vanish  from  the  universe, 
the  realistic  realm  is  thereby  modified  only  in  respect  of 
so  much  of  its  reality  as  you  intelligent  beings  carry 
away  with  'you  when  you  blunder  or  vanish.  To  say 
just  that,  is  to  be  realistic.  This  then  is  a  general  state- 
ment of  the  Realism  which  I  mean  in  the  present  lecture 
to  examine.  This  definition  still  needs,  however,  some 
further  historical  exemplification,  to  make  sure  that  we 
have  stated  it  not  unfairly. 

n 

Historically  speaking,  this  general  realistic  conception 
of  what  it  is  to  be  has  been  held  with  various  degrees 
of  consciousness  and  defmiteness  of  conception.  The 
early  Greek  thinkers  soon  learn  to  make  a  sharp  dis- 
tinction between  what  existed,  as  they  said,  "by  nature," 
and  what  was  merely  believed  from  the  point  of  view 
of  human  and  of  false  "opinion."  These  two  realms, 
the  real  and  the  false,  they  erelong  not  only  distin- 
guished, but  sundered.  It  was  this  sundering  that 


98    THE   FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

made  them  realists,  and  not  the  particular  sort  of 
nature  which  they  regarded  as  real.  The  changeless, 
although  sensuous  and  materialistic  Being  of  the  Elea 
tics,  is  only  one  case  of  such  sharp  sundering  of  the 
real  from  the  seeming.  That  true  Being  is,  in  some 
essential  way,  independent  of  false  opinion,  thus  comes 
early  to  be  regarded  as  a  sort  of  obvious  maxim. 
When  Protagoras  attacks  this  maxim,  his  extreme  form 
of  expression  is  a  natural  reaction  from  another  extreme. 
Plato's  theory  of  the  incorporeal  Ideas,  in  its  more  extreme 
form,  rests  upon  the  presupposition,  that  unless  knowledge 
is  founded  upon  the  absolutely  independent  reality,  noth- 
ing  is  known.1  Aristotle,  in  his  Metaphysics,  spends  a  long 
time  in  trying  to  define  what  makes  any  real  object,  or 
substance,  just  itself,  —  a  being  logically  independent  of 
other  beings.  That  the  definition  of  this  essence  or  of  any 
being  also  implies  that  a  real  substance  is  independent 
of  the  accident  that  it  is  known  by  another  is,  for  Aris- 
totle, rather  a  tacitly  assumed  and  self-evident  matter 
than  a  topic  of  frequent  overt  argument.  But  when,  in 

1  Any  summary  statement  of  the  significance  of  the  Platonic  Ideas  has 
to  be,  in  a  measure,  unjust.  I  here  follow  what  is,  on  the  whole,  Zeller's 
interpretation ;  and  I  lay  stress  upon  the  extremer  form  of  the  Platonic 
theory.  Plato  himself  sometimes  saw  much  deeper.  Independence,  in 
the  abstract  sense  hereafter  to  be  defined,  seems  indeed  certainly  to  be 
implied  in  the  famous  expression  (Sympos.  p.  211,  A  and  B):  aM  «a0' 
avrb  /xe0'  avrov  (wvoeiSts  del  6v,  taken  in  its  context  as  the  climax  of  an 
effort  to  define  the  complete  indifference  of  the  Ideas  to  all  beyond.  But 
that  the  Plato  of  the  Philebus  and  the  Sophist  recognizes  other  aspects  of 
the  situation  is  true.  The  argument  (Sophist,  p.  248)  that  our  knowledge 
of  Being  is  one  of  the  proofs  that  the  Real  is  both  active  and  passive,  and 
enters  into  relations,  is  identical  in  spirit  with  the  criticism  of  Realism 
here  to  be  given. 


THE  INDEPENDENT  BEINGS  99 

the  fourth  book  of  the  Metaphysics,  he  has  to  deal  with 
Protagorean  scepticism,  Aristotle  uses,  as  one  reductio  ad 
ab&urdum,  the  consideration  that,  were  this  Protagorean 
doctrine  true,  "  There  would  exist  nothing  in  case  beings 
with  souls  vanished  from  the  world.  For  then,"  he  says, 
"sense-perceptions  would  cease."  "That,"  he  contin- 
ues, "  perceivable  objects  and  sense-percepts  would  then 
vanish,  is  perhaps  true,  for  all  this  latter  existence  (i.e. 
as  we  should  say,  the  existence  of  color,  odors,  etc.)  is 
a  state  of  a  sentient  being ;  but  that  the  substrata  upon 
which  sense  is  based,  should  not  persist,  even  were  there 
no  sense-perception,  is  impossible.  For  sense-perception 
is  not  a  perception  of  itself,  but  there  is  some  other  over 
and  above  perception ;  and  this  other  must  necessarily  be 
prior  to  perception.  For  what  moves,  is  prior  in  nature 
to  what  is  moved.  And  if  one  says  that  these  two  prin- 
ciples (subject  and  object,  moved  and  mover)  are  related 
to  each  other,  the  same  result  still  holds  true."  That 
in  all  this  Aristotle  admits  interrelation,  and  recognizes 
no  independence  as  absolute,  is  true,  but  here  is  one  of 
the  central  difficulties  of  Aristotle's  system. 

Later  Realism  only  makes  this  sundering  of  knowledge 
and  object  more  express,  as  scepticism  has  to  be  faced, 
and  as  the  idea  of  the  individual  Self  gets  more  sharply 
contrasted  with  all  ideas  of  outer  things.  The  Cartesian 
dualism  of  extended  and  of  thinking  substance  derives 
its  extreme  character  from  considerations  with  which  the 
problem  of  knowledge  has  not  a  little  to  do.  Occasion- 
alism is  an  instance  of  the  translation  of  a  logical  inde- 
pendence of  essence  into  the  assertion  of  a  real  causal 
independence. 


100    THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

Locke  states  the  realistic  definition  briefly  when  he 
says,  of  his  primary  qualities :  "  The  particular  bulk, 
number,  etc.,  of  the  parts  of  fire,  or  snow,  are  really  in 
them,  whether  any  one's  senses  perceive  them  or  no;  and 
therefore  they  may  be  called  real  qualities,  because  they 
really  exist  in  those  bodies."  As  to  the  secondary  quali- 
ties, as  he  goes  on  to  say:  "  Take  away  the  sensation  of 
them  .  .  .  and  all  colors,  tastes,  odors,  and  sounds,  as  they 
are  such  particular  ideas,  vanish  and  cease."  Here  then 
is  the  realistic  touchstone,  the  test  of  reality.  Does  the 
object  stay  when  the  knowledge  vanishes?  The  converse 
of  this  test,  however,  also  holds  true  for  any  realism. 
For  erroneous  ideas  are  possible.  Hence,  whether  the 
object  is  or  is  not,  any  given  idea  may  be  held  by  any- 
,Xbody  that  you  please.  The  idea  might  then  persist  when 
the  object  vanishes,  or  remain  changeless  when  the  object 
changes. x 

It  is  of  service  to  compare  these  familiar  expressions  of 
the  classical  realistic  view  with  the  speech  used  by  an 
ancient  Hindoo  system  of  philosophy,  the  Sankhya.  The 
Sankhya  was  a  realistic  doctrine,  and  very  sharply  dual- 
istic.  Its  world  consisted  of  matter  and  of  soul,  each  of 
these  sorts  of  realities  being,  in  ultimate  nature,  totally 
different  from  the  other.  In  fact,  the  salvation  of  the 
wise  man  depends,  for  the  S&nkhya,  upon  his  absolutely 
distinguishing  himself  as  soul  from  all  material  objects, 

1  Kant,  in  his  criticism  of  the  Ontological  Proof  for  God's  existence, 
emphasizes  this  expression  of  the  realistic  test  of  being.  The  being  of 
fact,  he  says,  never  follows  from  any  mere  idea.  The  that  never  follows 
from  the  what.  In  other  words,  whether  or  no  any  object  exists,  your 
ideas  about  that  supposed  being  may  be  whatever  they  happen  to  be. 


THE   INDEPENDENT   BEINGS  101 

states,  and  possessions.  In  a  S&nkhya  treatise  translated 
by  Garbe  (a  commentary  upon  the  text  called  the 
Karika),  I  find  a  statement  of  the  realistic  definition  of 
Being,  in  a  form  abstract  enough,  but  illustrated  in 
characteristic  Hindoo  fashion.1  I  may  first  quote  the 
statement  of  the  commented  S&nkhya  text  in  question 
concerning  the  two  types  of  Being  of  which  this  extreme 
dualism  makes  the  world  consist.  On  the  one  side,  as 
this  text  tells  us,  there  is  the  material  world.  On  the 
other  side,  however,  there  is  the  soul,  which  the  S&ukhya 
doctrine  makes  absolutely  immaterial.  Now  both  the 
matter  and  the  soul  are  real  beings.  The  text  here  de- 
scribes them  as  to  their  essential  metaphysical  characters 
very  briefly,  and  side  by  side.  "  The  formed  matter,"  it 
says,  —  i.e.,  the  matter  of  the  physical  world,  "is  com- 
posed of  three  constituents,  —  is  object,  is  common  object 
for  all  knowers,  is  of  non-mental  character,  and  is  pro- 
ductive. The  materiel  prima  also  possesses  these  same 
characters.  The  soul  is  opposed  to  both ;  yet  (being  real) 
it  has  certain  features  in  common  with  them." 

The  commentator  explains  this  text  at  some  length. 
"  The  word  '  object,' "  he  says,  "  is  used  in  opposition  to 
those  who  say  (as  the  Buddhistic  metaphysicians  had 
asserted)  that  there  are  only  states  of  mind,  such  as  joy, 
sorrow,  confusion,  tones,  and  the  like.  An  object,"  he 
continues,  "  is  that  which  is  known  as  outside  one's  ideas. 
Therefore  is  the  term  'common  object'  also  used.  For 
this  term  implies  that  material  objects,  such  as  pottery,  for 

1  See  Der  Mondschein  der  S&nkhya-Wahrheit,  in  deutscher  Ueberset- 
zung  von  Richard  Garbe,  Abhandl.  der  Bayer.  Akad.  der  Wiss.  I.  Cl. , 
Bd.  XIX,  Abth.  Ill,  p.  667. 


102    THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF   BEING 

instance,  are  known  independently  by  many  different 
souls.  But  if  the  objects  were  only  the  soul's  state  of 
mind,  then,  since  states  of  mind  are  affections  of  one  in- 
dividual only,  the  objects  would  be  similarly  limited, 
precisely  as  one  man  cannot  observe  another  man's  ideas, 
since  the  interior  organ  is  invisible.  That  is  what  the 
text  means.  And  so,"  continues  the  commentator, "  it 
becomes  comprehensible  how  very  many  men  can  bethink 
themselves  of  a  single  (i.e.  of  the  same)  coquettish  glance 
of  a  dancing  girl,  while  that  otherwise  (namely,  upon  the 
basis  of  subjective  idealism)  would  not  be  possible."  So 
much  then  for  independent  beings  of  the  material  sort. 
You  see,  Their  independence  implies  that  these  beings  are 
out  of  all  mind,  and  yet  can  become  common  objects  for 
many  minds  at  once. 

The  commentator  then  indicates,  what  he  elsewhere 
developes  more  at  length,  namely,  the  features  that  the 
souls,  as  real  beings,  have  in  common  even  with  their 
extreme  opposite,  matter.  They  too,  he  points  out,  are 
eternal ;  they  are  independent ;  and  they  are  not  the 
product  of  anything  else.  To  be  sure,  unlike  matter, 
they  are  not  perceivable  from  without  through  sense. 
But  they  are  utterly  separate  in  being  from  matter,  and, 
as  thus  separate,  they  are  independent  individuals.  As  we 
just  saw,  salvation,  for  the  S&nkhya  philosophy,  depends 
upon  coming  to  know  precisely  this  utter  independence 
of  the  true  soul  and  the  material  world.  In  fact  the  soul 
is  not  only  separated  by  a  chasm  from  matter ;  it  is 
even  really  unaffected  by  matter.  What  seem  to  be 
affections  of  the  soul  are,  according  to  the  S&nkhya 
psycho-physical  theory,  material  states,  which  merely 


THE  INDEPENDENT  BEINGS  103 

appear  to  be  in  the  soul,  as,  according  to  a  favorite 
Sankhya  similitude,  the  red  Hibiscus  flower  is  reflected 
in  a  crystal  that  all  the  while  remains  inwardly  unaltered 
by  the  presence  of  the  flower.  The  result  is  a  theory 
of  a  sort  of  psycho-physical  parallelism,  founded,  to  be 
sure,  according  to  the  Sankhya,  upon  an  illusion. 

While  the  commentary  just  cited  belongs,  according 
to  Garbe,  to  the  twelfth  century  of  our  era,  and  the 
commented  text  of  the  Karika  itself  is  known  to  have 
existed  not  much  before  the  fifth  century,  the  meta- 
physical views  here  in  question  are  no  doubt  of  a  very 
ancient  date,  and  may  well  be  quite  independent  of  any 
but  Hindoo  origins.  In  any  case  the  passage  just  quoted 
serves  to  give  us,  from  a  remote  source,  two  or  three 
very  characteristic  and  universal  features  of  realistic 
doctrines,  —  features  whose  meaning  becomes  all  the 
clearer  for  our  attention  by  reason  of  their  foreign  dress. 
The  whole  may  be  summed  up  in  a  phrase:  This  real- 
istic world  is  a  world  of  Independent  Beings. 

Any  real  being,  as  you  see,  has  to  be  essentially,  and 
if  possible  absolutely,  independent.  The  nature  of  the 
gulf  that  divides  the  independent  beings  from  one  another 
is  peculiarly  indicated,  and  in  fact  is  typically  exempli- 
fied, by  a  certain  separation  that  is  discoverable  between 
knowledge  and  its  material  objects.  What  is  known,  if 
it  is  a  physical  thing,  is  outside  of  the  knower.  To  this 
sundering  of  knower  and  physical  object  common  sense 
bears  witness.  Moreover,  a  certain  proof  of  the  fact  of 
the  sundering,  and  at  all  events  an  explanation  of  what 
the  sundering  means,  is  furnished  by  the  further  fact 
that  many  knowers,  while  notoriously  isolated  from  one 


104    THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

another,  as  our  failure  to  read  the  ideas  of  our  neighbors 
proves,  can  still  know  the  same  outer  object.  The  same- 
ness of  the  physical  fact  for  all  souls,  is  only  explicable, 
in  view  of  the  mutual  isolation  of  the  souls,  by  the  sup- 
position of  an  equal  isolation  of  the  physical  fact  from  the 
inner  life  of  all  who  know  it.  Finally,  if  the  material 
objects  are  independently  real,  the  souls  that  know  are 
also  independently  real.  All  is  now  independence  and 
isolation.  This  is  a  world  of  chasms.  The  independence 
meant  is  intended  to  be  a  mutual  relation. 

So  much  for  our  S&nkhya  authors.  They  bring  again 
to  mind  what  I  earlier  mentioned  about  the  social  motives 
of  realism.  Our  acceptance  of  our  physical  objects  as 
topics  of  common  knowledge  for  all  men,  stands  side  by 
side  with  an  equally  social  assurance  on  our  part  that 
any  man's  knowledge  is  primarily  a  secret  from  all  his 
neighbors.  The  mutual  independence  of  the  knowers 
requires  their  common  separation  from  all  their  common 
objects.  The  independence  of  the  objects  makes  possible 
their  community  for  all  the  independent  knowers.  These 
social  presuppositions  have  a  great  deal  to  do  with  the 
development  of  the  whole  realistic  world,  —  a  world 
where  an  abstract  reduction  of  the  reality  to  a  mysterious 
unity,  such  as  the  Eleatic  One,  has  alternated  with  a 
tendency  to  create  numerous  gaps  and  separations.  In 
this  world,  thought,  as  you  see,  first  declares  certain 
barriers  absolute ;  and  then  proceeds,  by  immediate 
assurance,  or  by  elaborate  devices  of  reasoning,  to  tran- 
scend in  knowledge  these  barriers,  and  to  join  in  insight 
what  Being  is  first  said  to  have  put  forever  asunder. 
The  result  is  a  struggle  in  which  the  unity  sometimes 


THE  INDEPENDENT  BEINGS  105 

completely  triumphs;  but  then  the  One  becomes  a 
mystery,  or  the  many  survive,  and  then  where  are  the 
links  ? 

Two  features,  frequent,  but  by  no  means  universal, 
in  realistic  systems,  I  have  in  this  whole  summary  de- 
liberately kept  in  the  background.  Reality  has  often 
been  regarded,  by  the  realists  who  are  of  a  more  or  less 
Eleatic  type,  as  implying,  essentially,  the  permanence  and 
unchangeableness  of  the  reals.  So  it  was  with  Plato's 
Ideas ;  so  it  was  with  Herbart's  Reals ;  and  Spinoza's 
Substance  was  eternal.  A  similar  eternity  the  S&nkhya 
knew,  although  that  doctrine  also  recognized  a  realm  of 
real  changes.  Reality  has  also  often  been  made,  by  these 
or  by  other  Realists,  to  imply  essentially  the  causal  efficacy, 
the  active  potency,  of  the  real  entities.  These  two 
views,  of  course,  cannot  easily  be  harmonized.  But 
regarding  both  these  features  of  many  realistic  systems, 
I  can  here  only  observe  that  they  are,  to  my  mind, 
secondary  features. 

Historically,  they  are  indeed  not  unimportant  in  the  de- 
velopment of  Realism.  Permanence,  in  the  first  place,  has 
always  been  regarded,  —  and  especially  by  the  older  forms 
of  Realism,  —  as  a  peculiarly  strong  evidence  of  indepen- 
dence ;  and  often  it  has  been  conceived  as,  in  the  second 
place,  a  necessary  condition  of  such  independence.  So  it 
was,  for  instance,  for  Herbart.  What  lasts  forever,  wholly 
unchanged  by  anything,  must  of  course  be  unchanged  by 
the  coming  and  going  of  knowledge.  Hence  the  concept 
of  the  real  as  the  absolutely  Abiding,  has  played  a  great 
part,  not  only  in  the  Eleatic  doctrine,  in  Plato,  and  in 
Atomism,  but  also  in  modern,  scientifically  colored,  specu- 


106    THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

lations.  And  just  so,  too,  Power,  Efficacy,  Activity,  seem 
to  be  evidences  of  independence.  Plato  associates  them 
in  the  Sophist,  with  Reality.  Yet,  I  insist,  none  of  these 
predicates  are  essential  to  Realism. 

/  Realism  especially  tends  to  sunder  the  what  from  the 
that,  the  essence  from  its  existence.  But  permanence 
properly  belongs  to  the  what  and  not  to  the  that  of 
any  being  in  a  realistic  world.  And  the  same  is  true 
of  activity,  potency,  effectiveness.  One  can  define  a 
mythical  being,  say  Achilles,  conceiving  him  as  yellow- 
haired.  To  be  yellow-haired  belongs  to  the  what  of 
Achilles ;  to  his  essence,  not  to  his  existence.  One  can 
so  conceive  him  while  not  asserting  that  he  is,  but  while 
defining  him  as  a  myth.  But  just  as  easily  one  can 
conceive  him  as  active,  as  pursuing  Hector;  and  still 
one  need  not  conceive  him  as  anything  but  a  myth. 
Activity  and  realistic  existence  are  then  certainly  dif- 
ferent ideas,  just  as  much  as  yellow-haired  and  existence. 
Just  so  it  is  with  permanence.  Not  all  realists  have 
asserted  that  permanence  holds  true  of  the  Real.  A 
world  of  events  could  be  independently  real  for  any 
Heraclitean  thinker.  The  flashes  of  moonlight  upon 
water  may  as  well  stand  for  independent  realities  as 
any  other  facts  of  experience.  With  the  arguments 
used  in  special  realistic  systems,  for  the  permanence  of 
the  reals,  we  have  here  nothing  to  do.  Our  concern  is 
with  the  definition. 

So  there  remains  one  more  as  the  one  essential  his- 
torical mark  of  the  realistic  type  of  Being,  its  onto- 
logical  independence  of  knowledge  that  refers  to  it  from 
without. 


THE  INDEPENDENT  BEINGS  107 

III 

I  have  thus  defined  the  realistic  view  (and  have  tried 
by  historical  examples  both  to  elucidate  and  to  justify 
the  definition  given  at  the  outset)  and  above  all  I  have 
tried  to  separate  the  one  essential  feature  that  lies  at 
the  basis  of  every  realistic  system  from  the  countless 
accidental  features,  and  from  the  more  or  less  contro- 
versial consequences  that,  in  this  realistic  system,  or  in 
that,  distract  our  attention  from  the  most  fundamental 
issue.  This  issue  is  simply  the  problem  whether  any 
realistic  definition  whatever  can  be  self-consistent,  or 
can  be  adequate  to  what  we  seek  when  we  look  for  true 
Being.  Our  problem,  you  see,  is  not  here  whether  the 
real  world  contains  one  or  another  special  type  of  beings, 
—  whether  only  states  of  consciousness  and  their  real 
relations  really  exist,  or  whether  only  atoms  have  being, 
whether  colors  are  real,  or  whether  space  has  genuine 
being,  or  whether  souls  or  angels  are  to  be  found  in 
the  outer  universe.  Our  only  present  problem  relates  to 
the  sense  in  which  anything  whatever  can  be  called  real 
at  all.  We  wish  to  know  whether  this  abstract  sunder- 
ing of  the  what  and  the  that  can  be  consistently  carried 
out. 

But  when  the  issue  is  thus  simplified,  the  realistic 
definition  stands  before  you  as  something  that  is  on  the 
one  hand  very  plausible  and  familiar,  and  on  the  other 
hand  very  baffling  and  mysterious.  As  for  its  plausi- 
bility and  familiarity,  we  hardly  need  here  further  dwell 
upon  them.  Is  it  not  perfectly  obvious  that  the  very 
life  of  ordinary,  socially  colored  common  sense  depends 


108    THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

upon  tacitly  admitting,  or  on  occasion  vigorously  asseri> 
ing  that  "whether  or  no"  this  or  that  observer,  or  this 
or  that  pupil  at  school,  or  a  given  doubter  in  faith,  or  a 
particular  philosophical  thinker,  knows  certain  facts,  those 
facts,  whether  physical  or  mental,  whether  God,  or  mat- 
ter, or  moonbeams,  are  what  they  are  ?  This  "  whether 
or  no"  of  ordinary  common  sense  seems  to  be  simply 
crystallized  in  a  technically  abstract  expression  in  the 
fundamental  definition  of  systematic  realism  as  so  far 
stated.  On  the  other  hand,  so  soon  as  one  undertakes 
to  formulate  an  exact  account  of  the  way  in  which  Being 
is  independent  of  knowledge,  one  discovers  that  nothing 
seems  harder  to  carry  out  to  its  ultimate  logical  conse- 
quences than  the  definition  of  precisely  that  type  of 
independence  which  is  here  in  mind.  Common  sense 
knows,  in  the  ordinary  world  of  experience,  very  various 
grades  and  instances  of  relative  independence  amongst 
objects;  but  common  sense  also  knows  that  often  em- 
pirical objects  which  have  been  called  mutually  and 
even  totally  independent  turn  out  to  be,  in  other  aspects, 
very  closely  linked.  Yet  the  independence  which  Real- 
ism has  in  mind  as  characterizing  the  ultimate  Being 
of  things,  must  be  something  of  a  very  fundamental  and 
exact  meaning  and  consequence.  For  it  defines  just 
what  gives  to  things  their  whole  Reality.  Nevertheless 
realistic  systems  usually  find  it  very  much  easier  to 
assert  or  tacitly  to  assume  the  general  definition  of  inde- 
pendent being  just  stated,  than  to  give  any  precise 
account  of  the  logical  consequences  to  which  the  defini- 
tion leads.  As  soon,  however,  as  these  consequences 
themselves  are  directly  faced,  they  often  become  fairly 


THE   INDEPENDENT   BEINGS  109 

startling  in  their  strangeness.  And  in  what  sense  this 
last  observation  is  true,  a  very  moderate  knowledge  of 
the  history  of  Realism  will  show.  For  the  paradox  of 
this  history  is  that  while  the  realistic  metaphysic  begins 
as  the  very  voice  of  common  sense,  the  more  developed 
and  thoroughgoing  realistic  systems  show  a  character 
which  has  made  realism,  from  the  S&nkhya  to  Herbart, 
or  to  Herbert  Spencer,  the  breeding  place  of  a  wholly 
marvellous  race  of  metaphysical  paradoxes.  The  Atoms 
and  the  Monads,  the  Ideas  of  Plato,  the  isolated  Souls 
of  the  S&nkhya,  the  unknowable  Things  in  Themselves 
of  Kant,  the  transcendent  Reals  of  Herbart,  the  Eleatic 
One,  the  Substance  of  Spinoza,  and  the  Unknowable  of 
Spencer,  are  beings  far  more  remote  from  our  ordinary 
experience  and  from  common  sense  than  are  many  views 
such  as  Realism  vigorously  opposes.  Yet  all  these  types 
of  hypothetical  realistic  beings  were  invented  in  the  very 
effort  to  make  a  realistic  definition  of  what  it  is  to  be, 
consistent  with  itself,  and  adequate  to  the  demands  of 
life  and  of  experience. 

A  definition  whose  union  with  common  sense  is  at 
first  so  close,  but  whose  consequences  are  subject  to 
such  remarkable  and  rapid  transformations,  is  not  indeed 
thereby  discredited,  but  is  at  all  events  properly  subject  to 
a  close  scrutiny,  to  see  whether  we  may  not  find  out  the 
reason  of  this  tendency  towards  unexpected  interpreta- 
tions of  Being.  But  if  we  indeed  look  yet  more  narrowly 
at  the  history  of  Realism,  we  find  obvious  motives  run- 
ning through  the  whole  which  make  it  seem  in  still  other 
ways  paradoxical.  For  upon  such  closer  scrutiny  we  find 
that  Realism  has,  as  it  were,  vibrated  between  two  histori- 


110    THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL   CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

cal  extremes,  extremes  suggested  by  the  well-known  ques- 
tion whether  the  real  world  contains  One  independently 
real  Being,  or  Many  such  beings,  all  equally  independent 
of  any  knowledge  that,  not  belonging  to  their  own  nature, 
refers  to  them  from  without.  It  is  just  the  problem  of 
the  One  and  the  Many  which,  when  it  arises  in  a  world 
denned  in  the  realistic  way,  is  the  deeper  source  of  those 
marvellous  metaphysical  hypotheses  of  which  we  just 
spoke.  And  it  is  when  we  consider  this  aspect  of  the 
history  of  Realism  that  we  become  at  length  fully  awake 
to  the  gravity  of  the  problems  in  hand. 

Realistic  systems  have  frequently,  like  the  S£nkhya, 
taught  that  many  different  beings  are  real.  The  histori- 
cal fate  of  such  pluralistic  forms  of  Realism  is  well 
known,  and  has  already  been  mentioned.  Again  and 
again,  with  an  uniformity  that  seems  characteristic,  such 
types  of  Realism,  in  order  to  assure  the  true  multiplicity 
of  their  real  beings,  have  defined  these  beings  as  in  ulti- 
mate nature  quite  independent  of  one  another,  as  essen- 
tially out  of  all  mutual  relations,  as  isolated.  The  result 
one  sees  in  the  Monads  of  Leibniz,  or  in  the  Reals  of 
Herbart,  or  in  the  souls  of  the  Sankhya  itself.  Then, 
necessarily,  there  has  arisen  the  question  why,  despite 
the  isolation  of  the  real  Beings,  this,  our  own  world  of 
experience,  seems  so  full  of  interrelationships,  of  mutual 
connections,  of  laws  that  bind  soul  to  soul,  and  sun  to 
planet,  and  all  things  to  space,  to  time,  or  to  God.  To 
meet  such  demands,  Realism  has  in  just  such  pluralistic 
systems  resorted  to  various  paradoxical  secondary  expla- 
nations. Preestablished  harmonies,  illusory  forms  of  un- 
real linkage,  or  assumptions  of  intermediating  principles, 


THE  INDEPENDENT  BEINGS  111 

—  assumptions  such  as  lead  the  philosopher  into  a  hope- 
less,  because    unreasonable,   complexity,  —  such    are   the 
devices   whereby   Realism   has   in   such    cases  sought  to 
join   again   the   sundered  fragments  of  its   disintegrated 
universe,  like  a  careless  child  tearfully  trying  to  mend  a 
shattered  crystal. 

Or,  on  the  other  hand,  some  historical  systems  of 
Realism  have  been  simply  monistic,  as  the  Eleatic  doc- 
trine was,  or  as,  upon  the  realistic  side  of  his  ambiguous 
system,  Spinoza's  teaching  appears.  But  in  such  cases, 
not  only  has  common  sense  often  revolted  at  the  thought 
of  making  all  the  independently  real  beings  into  a  single 
Being,  but  the  realist's  own  logic  has  been  easily  turned 
against  him.  For,  as  an  objector  may  then  briefly  sum 
up  the  case,  addressing  the  merely  monistic  realists: 
"Our  so-called  false  opinions,  when  we  believe  that  the 
realities  of  the  world  are  many,  and  are  not  One  Being, 

—  are  not  these  opinions  themselves,  viewed   merely  as 
opinions,  still  also  psychical  facts,  as  real  in  the  mental 
world  as  is  your  One  Being  in  its  world.     For  you  can- 
not even  say  that  the  opinions  are  false  without  admit- 
ting that,  even  as  mere  psychical  facts,  the  opinions  are 
in   existence.     But   our  false   opinions,  as   you   yourself 
also  say,  are  many.     Hence  there  is  a  real  manifoldness 
in  the  world,  and  your  simple  One  cannot  be  the  whole 
truth."     And  this  statement  is,  of  course,  conclusive  as 
against  any  absolutely  simple   oneness   about   the   inde- 
pendent reality. 

Paradox  has  faced  the  realist,  therefore,  whenever  he 
has  attempted,  during  the  history  of  thought,  seriously 
to  apply  that  idea  of  the  fundamental  definition  of  Being 


112    THE   FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

which  lies  at  the  basis  of  his  whole  doctrine,  to  the 
development  of  a  positive  conception  of  a  world  that 
shall  contain  either  One  Being  or  Many  Realities.  Either 
all  Unity,  or  else  no  linkages  :  such  has  been  his  historical 
alternative.  Now  is  this  fate  of  Realism  a  mere  accident, 
due  to  the  defects  of  individual  realistic  thinkers  ?  Or 
is  it  somehow  founded  in  the  very  nature  of  the  realistic 
definition  of  what  it  is  to  be  ? 

This  question  deserves  to  be  considered  more  carefully, 
and  upon  its  own  merits.  We  have  perhaps  exhausted 
the  aid  that  a  merely  historical  survey  can  just  at  present 
give  us.  We  must  turn  back  to  our  realistic  definition 
itself,  and  must  directly  consider,  first,  how  best  to  state 
its  exact  logical  force,  and  then  how  to  test  it  by  apply- 
ing it  to  that  famous  problem  as  to  whether  the  universe 
contains  One  real  Being  or  Many  real  Beings.  For,  as  I 
must  insist,  it  is  precisely  the  problem  of  the  One  and 
the  Many  which  will  prove  to  be  the  great  test  problem 
of  realistic  metaphysics. 

IV 

And  so  we  turn  from  the  perplexing  and  varied  his- 
tory of  the  fortunes  of  realistic  doctrine,  to  the  even 
more  forbidding  task  of  reflecting  upon  the  first  prin- 
ciples of  Realism.  We  lay  aside  for  the  time  all  thought 
of  whether  God,  or  the  souls,  or  permanent  matter,  or 
the  flashes  of  moonlight  upon  water,  or  the  coquettish 
glances  of  our  S&nkhya  commentator's  world  of  Oriental 
courts  and  splendors,  are  to  be  regarded  as  real  beings. 
We  ask  only  as  to  the  most  general  theory  of  the  consti- 


THE  INDEPENDENT  BEINGS  113 

tution  of  any  realistic  world.  And  here  we  shall  restate 
the  precise  sense  of  the  realistic  definition,  and  next  shall 
develope,  in  a  series  of  formal  propositions,  its  inevitable 
consequences,  until  we  see  to  what  end  they  lead,  both 
the  realist  himself,  and  all  whose  faith,  whether  in  the 
world  of  science  or  in  the  realm  of  religion,  depends 
upon  realistic  philosophical  formulas. 

As  to  the  meaning  of  the  realistic  definition,  we  must 
take  our  realist  seriously.  He  declares  that  whenever 
you  know  any  being  not  yourself,  your  object  is  prima- 
rily and  logically  quite  independent  of  your  knowledge, 
so  that  whether  your  knowledge  comes  or  goes,  is  true 
or  is  false,  your  object  so  far  may  remain  whatever  it  was. 
He  asserts,  also,  that  in  knowing  the  rest  of  the  universe, 
you  do,  on  the  whole,  know  a  being  that  is  not  your 
knowledge,  and  that  is  consequently  independent  of  your 
knowledge.  He  asserts  that  this  independence  is  the 
very  means  of  defining  the  Being  of  any  real  object,  when 
viewed  in  relation  to  any  knowledge  of  this  real  object 
that  is  not  itself  a  part  of  the  object  known.  Now  this 
definition  turns  upon  the  conception  of  independence. 
In  just  what  sense  is  the  reality  to  be  independent  of 
the  knowing  process? 

In  the  Mathematical  Theory  of  Probabilities,  the  con- 
ception of  events  that  are  said  to  be  mutually  indepen- 
dent is  familiar.  Two  chance  throws  of  dice,  two  draw- 
ings of  a  lottery,  are  such  independent  events.  But  the 
definition  of  such  independence  in  the  theory  in  question 
is  always  relative,  and  is  limited  to  special  aspects  of  the 
objects  in  question.  One  sometimes  means,  in  such  cases, 
that  while  both  events,  say  both  throws  of  the  dice,  are 
i 


114    THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

indeed  supposed  to  be  connected  in  the  general  causal 
order  of  the  universe,  and  so  are  not  wholly  independent, 
we  happen  not  to  know  what  this  causal  connection  is. 
Or  again,  even  if  one  talks  of  pure  chance,  and  ignores 
causal  linkage,  one  has  indeed  to  observe  that  any  two 
physical  events  are  viewed  as  occurring  in  the  same  space, 
and  in  the  same  time,  or  perhaps  in  the  case  of  the  same 
dice.  One  has  also  to  admit  that  all  parts  of  space,  and 
all  moments  of  time,  are,  in  a  sense,  conceptually  inter- 
dependent. For  you  cannot  conceive  a  cubic  foot  of  space 
destroyed,  without  abstracting  from  all  space ;  nor  can 
you  suppose  this  hour  to  vanish  wholly  from  the  time 
stream  without  abolishing  all  time.  But  if  space  and  time 
are  thus  Wholes  of  conceptually  linked  and  mathemati- 
cally interdependent  parts,  of  course  one  has  to  admit 
that,  in  a  sense,  no  two  objects,  no  two  events,  in  space 
and  in  time,  can  be  denned  as  through  and  through  logi- 
cally or  essentially  independent  of  each  other;  since  in 
denning  each  as  to  its  time  and  space  relations,  one  has  to 
take  account  of  facts  which  can  be  recognized  only  as 
mathematically  linked  with  the  space  and  time  aspects  of 
the  other  object  or  event.  Yet,  nevertheless,  in  the  theory 
of  probabilities,  one  still  calls  two  events  that  occur  in  the 
same  space  and  time,  or  even  in  the  repeated  throwing  of 
the  same  dice,  independent  events.  Plainly  then,  one 
merely  means  that  while  these  events  are  not  wholly  inde- 
pendent, there  is  an  aspect  in  which  they  may  be  called^ 
independent,  either  because  one  does  not  know  what  the 
interdependence  is,  or  because  knowing,  one  ignores  some 
aspect  of  the  interdependence  as  insignificant. 

Now  Realism  usually  also  admits,  even  while  it  speaks 


THE  INDEPENDENT  BEINGS  115 

of  the  object  as  independent  of  the  knowledge,  that 
various  causal  connections,  nevertheless,  bind  this  or 
that  object  to  this  or  that  state  of  knowledge.  On  the 
other  hand,  the  independence  here  in  question  seems  to 
mean  something  much  more  nearly  absolute  than  the 
independence  which  the  Theory  of  Probabilities  has  in 
mind  when  it  speaks  of  the  two  throws  of  the  dice  as 
independent  events.  For  the  "whether  or  no"  of  cus- 
tomary realistic  phraseology  means  to  sunder  knowledge 
and  object,  taken  in  their  deepest  truth,  more  completely 
than  any  adjacent  physical  events,  or  even  than  any  two 
merely  physical  facts  can  be  sundered.  For  it  is  the 
very  that  of  the  object  which  is  to  be  essentially  and 
wholly  sundered  from  the  what  of  the  object,  in  so  far 
as  the  latter  is  expressed  in  any  idea. 

The  only  way  to  deal  with  a  possibly  ambiguous  con- 
ception like  this,  is  to  view  it  first  in  its  most  extreme 
form,  and  to  observe  its  consequences.  Then  later,  if  the 
conception  is  proposed  in  some  modified  form,  the  possi- 
bility of  such  modification  may  be  considered.  In  this 
lecture,  then,  I  shall  henceforth  take  the  realistic  type  of 
independence  literally,  and  as  a  total  independence.  How 
alone  a  modified  Realism  can  be  stated,  we  shall  see  in 
connection  with  our  Third  Conception  of  Being.  For  the 
time,  our  realist  shall  be  supposed  to  say,  as  many  do,, 
"  Knowledge  makes  no  difference  to  its  real  outer  Object." 
What  follows  ? 

In  brief,  then,  this  realistic  definition  seems  to  imply 
two  assertions:  First,  that  even  if  your  knowledge  and 
its  object  are  facts  which  when  examined,  say  by  a  psy- 
chologist, appear  to  him  to  be  causally  connected,  or 


116    THE   FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

which,  when  externally  observed,  seem  to  agree,  still  any 
such  linkage,  where  it  exists,  is  no  part  of  the  essential 
nature,  i.e.  of  the  mere  definition,  either  of  your  object 
in  so  far  as  it  is  real,  or  of  your  knowledge  in  so  far  as 
it  consists  of  mere  ideas.  If  your  knowledge  is  true,  is 
sound,  is  valid,  it  is  indeed  such  as  somehow  to  agree 
with  the  object.  In  other  words,  ideas  depend  for  their 
truth  upon  objects.  But  then  false  opinion  is  just  as 
possible  in  a  realistic  world  as  is  truth.  You  cannot  tell 
by  examining  a  "mere  idea"  as  an  idea  in  a  realistic 
world,  whether  its  real  object  is  or  is  not,  any  more  than 
you  can  tell  by  merely  considering  an  object,  whether 
any  particular  idea  external  to  that  object  does  or  does 
not  rightly  represent  it.  That  is  why  a  realist  has  to 
reject  with  Kant  the  well-known  ontological  proof  for 
God's  existence.  God's  existence  cannot  be  proved  from 
any  mere  idea  about  God.  No  "mere  idea"  is,  as  such, 
essentially  linked  to  its  independent  object.  The  that 
in  a  realistic  world  never  follows  from  the  mere  what. 
Nothing  has  real  being  merely  by  virtue  of  the  fact  that 
it  is  conceived  by  any  knower.  Conversely,  nothing  is  con- 
ceived in  idea  merely  by  virtue  of  the  mere  fact  that  it 
is  real.  If,  then,  idea  and  object  are  linked,  by  ties  of 
.  causation,  or  by  the  mere  fact  that  the  idea  happens  to 
be  true,  then  such  linkage,  for  a  realist,  is  another  fact, 
namely,  just  the  fact  that  the  causal  connection  itself 
exists,  or  that  the  idea,  by  good  fortune,  is  true  of  its 
object.  A  cat  may  look  at  a  king;  and  hereupon  both 
cat  and  king  may  be  viewed  by  a  student  of  psychology 
or  physics  as  facts  in  the  interdependent  world  of  space 
and  time.  But  the  cat's  looking,  viewed  as  knowledge, 


THE  INDEPENDENT  BEINGS  117 

makes  "  no  difference "  to  the  king ;  it  is  no  part  of  the 
definition  of  the  king's  real  being  that  he  should  be 
known  or  observed  by  a  cat.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
cat's  idea  of  the  king  may  be  as  false  as  you  please.  The 
"mere  idea"  in  the  cat's  mind  in  no  wise  essentially 
determines  the  existence  of  the  king.  Just  so,  Realism 
asserts  that  existent  causal  or  other  linkage  between  any 
knower  and  what  he  knows  is  no  part  of  the  definition 
of  the  object  known,  or  of  its  real  being,  or  of  the  essence 
of  the  knowing  idea  if  viewed  in  itself  alone  as  a  "  mere 
idea." 

In  the  second  place,  however,  Realism,  taken  in  its  un- 
modified form,  asserts  that  the  independence  here  in  ques- 
tion, namely,  the  logical  or  essential  independence  of  ob- 
ject over  against  knowledge,  is,  indeed,  in  its  own  realm, 
absolute.  For  it  is  the  whole  Being  of  the  object,  spatial, 
temporal,  inner,  and  outer,  and  all  that  is  really  true  of 
it,  that  is  independent  of  the  fact  that  anybody  knows  this 
truth. 

This  view  of  Being  may,  for  the  sake  of  precision,  re- 
ceive still  a  little  further  development,  and  we  may  now 
afresh  state  the  matter  in  the  most  general  terms  thus :  — 

Let  there  first  be  conceived  any  possible  object,  let  us 
call  it  o.  We  want  to  know  what  would  happen  if  this 
possible  object  o  were  real.  To  this  end  let  there  be 
conceived  a  second  object,  other  than  the  first;  and  let 
this  second  object  be  called  somebody's  knowledge  or 
idea  or  opinion,  true  or  false,  about  the  first  object  o. 
For  brevity,  let  us  simply  name  this  second  member  of 
our  pair  "  the  idea  of  0."  We  shall  first  view  it  merely 
as  a  knowing  process.  We  care  in  no  whit  whose  idea 


118    THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

this  is,  or  how  good  or  poor  a  representative  of  the  first 
object  it  seems  to  be. 

Next  let  us  define  the  relation  of  the  idea  of  o  to  its 
object  0,  the  other  member  of  the  pair,  —  the  relation, 
namely,  which  unmodified  Realism  regards  as  essential. 
The  definition  in  question  is  now,  as  a  mere  abstract  state- 
ment, easy.  Simply  suppose  the  idea  of  o  to  change, 
in  any  way,  becoming  a  good  idea  where  it  was  formerly 
bad,  or  dim  where  it  formerly  was  clear,  or  altering  in 
the  reverse  of  these  wa}rs,  or  in  any  other  way.  Let 
the  idea  of  o  be  first  one  man's  idea,  and  then  another 
man's  idea  of  0,  or  finally,  let  the  idea  of  0,  for  the 
time,  vanish  altogether  from  the  scene.  Having  tried 
all  such  changes  in  the  idea  of  0,  then  arbitrarily 
define  o  as  such  an  object  that,  as  far  as  the  nature  of 
o  and  that  of  the  idea  of  o  are  alone  considered,  there 
is  no  logical  necessity  that  any  change  in  o,  or  in  the 
whole  Being  of  o  so  far  as  o  is  real,  need  correspond 
to  or  follow  from  any  of  these  variations  of  the  idea 
of  o.  In  other  words,  if  o  is  later  to  be  viewed  as 
causally  linked  to  the  idea,  some  third  and  wholly  ex- 
ternal power,  say  somebody's  will,  must  be  also  real, 
and  must  be  supposed,  if  that  be  still  possible,  to  co- 
operate with  the  idea  and  to  induce  such  changes  in 
the  knowing  object.  This  definition  of  o  as  such  an 
object  that  by  the  definition  of  o  itself  no  change  in  o 
logically  need  correspond  to  any  variation  in  the  idea 
of  0,  or  even  to  the  total  vanishing  of  that  idea, — 
this  definition,  I  say,  will  hereupon  be  the  more  fully 
developed  statement  of  the  proposition  that  the  object 
o  is  independent  of  the  idea  or  opinion  of  knowledge 


THE  INDEPENDENT  BEINGS  lift 

which  refers  to  it,  or  that  essence  and  existence  are 
mutually  independent.  Any  causal  or  other  linkage 
between  o  and  the  idea  will  have  to  be  later  added  as 
a  third  fact,  involved  neither  in  the  mere  essence  of  o 
nor  in  that  of  the  idea,  in  case  any  such  linkage  is  to 
be  found. 

Moreover,  the  essential  independence  of  object  and 
"  mere  idea,"  in  so  far  as  each  is  first  viewed  by  itself 
alone,  will  have  to  be  a  mutual  independence.  The 
idea  will  have  to  be,  in  its  own  separate  essence,  inde- 
pendent of  the  object.  Otherwise,  by  merely  examining 
the  idea,  taken  by  itself,  you  could  prove  something 
about  the  existence  of  its  object.  But,  if  so,  then  the 
that  would  follow  from  the  what,  and  the  independent 
existence  of  a  thing  from  the  presence  of  some  mere 
idea  of  the  thing.  That,  however,  is  forbidden  by  the 
whole  spirit  of  realism.  For  that  anything  is,  is  a  mere 
fact,  to  be  wholly  sundered  from  what  anybody  thinks 
it  to  be.  So  we  can  accordingly  add  that  the  object  o 
also,  when  viewed  in  itself,  might  be  supposed  to  change 
or  to  vanish  without  any  change  occurring  in  the  idea 
of  o.  Of  course  if  the  idea  is  to  remain  true,  it  will 
indeed  change  when  o  changes,  and  so  will  be  in  that 
way  dependent  upon  o.  But  then  an  idea  might  be 
false.  That  any  given  idea  is  true,  or  agrees  with 
its  object,  is  itself  a  further  fact  in  a  realistic  world, 
a  tertium  quid.  But  this  fact,  like  any  other,  may  either 
be  or  not  be.  Mention  to  me  a  mere  idea,  define  it  as 
you  will,  and  in  a  realistic  world  I  have  to  say  that 
this  idea  might  be  all  that  it  now  is  whether  or  no 
any  corresponding  object  exists  in  the  real  world. 


120    THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

And  now  suppose  that  o  stands  for  any  real  object 
that  you  please,  whether  an  angel,  or  a  worm,  or  a 
Spencerian  Unknowable ;  and  that  o  is,  precisely  thus, 
independent  of  any  idea  that  you  please,  so  long  as 
this  idea  is  not  itself  a  part  of  o.  Suppose,  too,  that 
the  object  o  is  consequently  also  independent  even  of 
the  very  ideas  by  which  we  just  now  declared  it  to  be 
independent.  Suppose  just  so  that  the  ideas  are,  as 
mere  ideas,  definable  independently  of  their  objects. 
Then,  finally,  we  have  before  us  the  unmodified  realistic 
definition  of  the  sense  in  which  the  object  o  is  real. 
For  Realism  asserts  simply  that  the  real  being  of  o  is 
adequately  defined  by  the  supposed  law  that  no  change 
in  either  o  or  the  mere  idea  of  o  primarily  or  essentially 
corresponds  to  any  change  or  variation  or  vanishing  of 
the  other  member  of  this  pair,  so  long  as  that  idea  is 
not  itself  a  part  of  0,  and  that  any  causal  connection, 
or  truthful  agreement,  or  other  such  mutual  dependence 
of  o  and  the  idea,  if  it  ever  came  to  exist,  would  be  a 
third  fact,  external  both  to  the  primary  nature  of  o  and 
to  that  of  the  idea. 

This  abstract  development  of  the  sense  of  that 
"  whether  or  no  "  which  common  sense  so  lightly  utters 
when  it  speaks  of  an  object  as  real  "  whether  or  no " 
you  are  aware  of  the  fact,  —  this  development,  I  say, 
already  serves  to  bring  more  clearly  before  us  the  ex- 
treme subtlety  of  the  considerations  upon  which  the 
realistic  view  depends.  But  the  definition  is  now  com- 
plete. Let  us  at  once  set  it  to  work.  It  has  defined 
a  world.  Let  us  enter  that  world,  and  see  what  is 
there. 


THE  INDEPENDENT  BEINGS  121 


And  so  next  I  ask  the  formal  question:  In  the 
realistic  world  whose  Being  is  thus  defined,  could  there 
exist  Many  different  beings  ?  And  if  they  existed,  in 
what  relation  to  one  another  would  they  stand?  Or 
again,  could  a  realistic  world  contain  only  One  sole 
Being,  to  the  exclusion  of  many  beings? 

These  questions  at  once  raise  another  question,  viz., 
What  are  we  now  to  mean  by  the  term  "  One  real  Being," 
and  what  by  the  term  "  Many  real  Beings  "  ?  Some  real- 
istic systems  have  answered  this  question  by  saying  at 
once  that  by  calling  a  real  Being  One,  we  mean  that  this 
being  is  perfectly  simple,  having  no  parts  or  passions,  no 
internal  variety  of  nature,  no  complexity  about  it.  This 
is  what  Herbart  declares  about  each  one  of  the  many  real 
beings  of  which  his  world  is  composed.  A  realist  of 
Herbart's  type  would  insist  that  wherever  there  is  real 
variety,  there  must  be  many  real  beings,  so  that  to  assert 
that  there  is  only  one  reality  in  the  world,  would  be  to 
assert  that  all  variety  is  illusory.  Since  Herbart  holds 
that  variety  is  real,  he  has  to  say  that  the  world  consists 
of  many  different  beings,  while  each  separate  being  for 
him  is  absolutely  simple. 

The  arguments  used  for  such  views  by  realists  like 
Herbart  need  not  here  concern  us.  In  this  general  exam- 
ination of  Realism  we  may  avoid  altogether  that  issue, 
and  may  leave  it  a  wholly  open  question,  by  arbitrarily 
defining  the  sort  of  difference  between  two  beings  which, 
if  it  were  certainly  known  to  be  present,  would  be  great 
enough  to  suffice  to  assure  us  that  these  beings  were 


122    THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

really  two,  and  were  not  mere  parts  or  aspects  of  any 
single  being.  This  characteristic  difference  which  would 
suffice  to  assure  us  that  two  beings  were  different  reali- 
ties, may  be  defined  without  in  the  least  attempting  to 
pass  upon  the  question  whether  any  variety  could  after- 
wards be  found,  in  a  realistic  world,  within  the  bounds 
of  a  single  being. 

Accordingly,  I  shall  here  not  at  all  either  assert  or 
deny  that  a  single  realistic  being,  if  found,  would  be  a 
simple  being.  For  all  that  I  now  know,  a  single  realistic 
entity  may  be  as  simple  as  Herbart  wished,  or  as  complex 
as  the  whole  arch  of  the  heavens.  I  shall  only  say  that 
if,  in  the  realistic  world,  we  were  to  find  two  objects 
that  were  as  independent  of  each  other  as,  in  our  defini- 
tion of  the  general  realistic  conception  of  what  it  is 
to  be,  the  object  of  knowledge  was  independent  of  any 
knowledge  of  that  object,  then,  and  then  only,  we  should 
call  those  objects  two  real  beings,  really  different  from 
each  other.  If,  however,  on  the  other  hand,  we  should 
find  that,  within  the  realistic  world,  all  the  real  objects 
there  present  were  in  any  way  linked  together,  so  as 
not  to  be  mutually  independent,  we  should  so  far  have, 
according  to  just  the  present  definition,  to  regard  them  as 
parts  or  aspects  of  One  real  being. 

This  way  of  stating  our  present  meaning  for  the  terms 
"  One  "  and  "  Many,"  as  applied  to  the  realistic  world,  is 
of  course,  if  you  please,  an  arbitrary  way.  But  it  has  the 
advantage  of  leaving  open  all  the  questions  as  to  whether 
any  single  being  would  also,  upon  examination,  prove  to 
be  a  simple  being;  and  this  definition  of  unity  and  mul- 
tiplicity has  also  the  advantage  of  exhaustively  stating 


THE  INDEPENDENT  BEINGS  123 

a  perfectly  definite  alternative.  Let  me  restate  then,  in 
exact  form,  just  this  definition  of  the  One  and  the  Many. 

Suppose  then  that,  in  the  realistic  world,  we  should 
find  two  real  objects,  a  and  b.  Suppose  that  they  were 
found  to  be  such  that  if  either  of  them  changed  in  any 
way  whatever,  or  vanished,  the  other  of  them  might  still 
consistently  be  conceived  as  undergoing  no  change  what- 
ever. That  is,  suppose  that  the  presence  or  the  absence, 
or  any  alteration  of  either  of  them,  logically  speaking, 
need  make  "no  difference"  to  the  other,  in  precisely  the 
same  sense  in  which  Realism  says  that  it  now  makes 
"  no  difference  "  to  your  object  whether  you  know  it  or 
not.  Suppose,  in  brief,  the  universal  law  that,  so  far  as 
the  nature  of  a  and  b  is  alone  considered,  no  change  in 
either  a  or  b  need  correspond  to  any  change  in  the  other 
member  of  this  pair.  Then,  by  my  present  definition, 
a  and  b  would  be  two  different  real  beings ;  while  if  any 
less  mutual  independence  than  this  existed,  my  present 
definition  would  regard  a  and  b  as  parts  of  one  complete 
Being.  Upon  this  basis  we  could  once  more  ask  the 
realist :  "  Does  your  world  contain  in  just  this  sense  Many 
different,  that  is  mutually  independent  beings,  or  does  it 
contain  only  One  real  being,  whose  inner  structure,  per- 
haps simple,  perhaps  infinitely  complex,  still  permits  of  no 
mutual  independence  of  parts. 

Two  answers  are,  logically  speaking,  now  open  to  the 
realist.  He  can  decide  for  the  One  ;  he  can  decide  for  the 
Many.  For  the  argument's  sake,  I  suppose  him  first  to 
decide  for  the  Many.  His  world  shall  now  contain  various 
mutually  independent  beings  —  beings  such  that,  as  they 
at  first  are  defined,  the  existence  and  the  nature  of  any 


124    THE  FOUK  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

one  of  them  is  essentially  indifferent  to  the  presence,  or 
absence,  or  alteration  of  any  of  the  others.  So  far  as  the 
primary  definition  of  any  one  of  them  goes,  no  change  in 
that  one  need  correspond  to  any  change  in  the  others. 
This  is  my  realist's  present  hypothesis.  I  ask  at  once, 
what  further  consequences  follow  from  this  hypothesis? 
1  And  in  particular  I  want  to  know  whether,  when  once 
the  realist  has  defined  his  many  beings  as  logically  inde- 
pendent and  as  all  in  his  sense  real,  he  can  ever  after- 
wards define  any  way  in  which  they  can  come  to  be  linked, 
say  by  causation  or  space  or  time  ?  In  brief,  I  want  to  see 
him  mend  the  broken  crystal  of  the  world  of  the  Many, 
and  make  one  world  of  it.  In  answer,  I  suppose  that 
the  realist  may  here  at  once  counsel  me  to  consult  experi- 
ence. What  is  more  familiar  than  the  existence  of  really 
independent  beings  ?  Yonder  in  the  ocean  there  are  drops 
of  water.  Here  on  the  land  is  my  desk.  Both  are  real. 
Does  any  change  in  one  of  these  beings  just  now  need  to 
correspond  to  any  change  in  the  other.  If  either  were  sup- 
posed to  vanish,  would  the  other  thereby  be  changed? 
The  unseen  meteors  in  interplanetary  spaces,  are  they  not 
beings  that  are  real,  and  that  yet  just  now  make  no  differ- 
ence to  your  being  or  to  mine  ?  If  we  change  or  die,  do 
they  not  move  on  unheeding?  If  their  swarms  disintegrate, 
do  we  therefore  suffer  ?  What  then  is  more  familiar  than 
the  empirical  fact  that  the  real  world  contains  many 
mutually  independent  beings  ?  In  fact  there  are  men  in 
China  or  in  Lapland  who  are  beings  utterly  independent 
of  me.  They  know  me  not,  nor  I  them;  and  our  lives 
make  "no  difference"  to  one  another.  Is  this  not  the 
verdict  of  experience  ? 

;  i\L«' 


THE  INDEPENDENT  BEINGS  125 

But  as  to  the  consequences  of  such  independence,  why 
is  not  experience  also  again  our  guide?  Beings,  thus  pri- 
marily independent,  may  later  come  to  be  linked  by  actual 
ties.  These  ties  are  then  new  facts  in  the  world.  But 
they  are  possible.  The  drop  of  water  in  the  ocean,  evapo- 
rated, may  enter  into  the  atmospheric  circulation,  may  be 
carried,  as  moisture,  to  my  desk,  and  may  there  help  to 
warp  the  wood.  The  meteors,  reaching  the  earth's  neigh- 
borhood, may  be  seen  and  perhaps  heard  as  they  explode. 
The  men  in  China  or  in  Lapland  may  become  my  business 
correspondents,  my  enemies,  or  my  neighbors.  So  then 
independence,  first  real,  may  later  change  to  mutual  depen- 
dence, and  what  were  strangers  may  become  linked.  Is 
not  all  this  obvious  ? 

But  if  one  thus  urges  upon  me  such  considerations,  I 
reply  at  once  that  all  this  is  simply  not  obvious  as  any 
case  of  true  independence  or  of  its  possible  consequences. 
I  have  just  abstractly  denned  an  absolute  type  of  mutual 
independence  supposed  to  exist  amongst  many  real  beings. 
This  independence,  I  suppose  a  realist  hypothetically 
to  assert  as  the  truth  about  this  world.  I  ask  for  the 
consequences  of  this  hypothesis.  But  now  I  distinctly 
decline  to  admit  that,  in  our  concrete  human  experience, 
you  can  ever  show  me  any  two  physically  real  objects 
which  are  so  independent  of  each  other  that  no  change  in 
one  of  them  need  correspond  to  any  change  of  the  other. 
On  the  contrary,  the  very  cases  mentioned  are  cases  of 
objects  such  that  certain  changes  of  one  do  very  really 
correspond  to  very  precise  changes  in  the  other,  and  the 
very  beings  of  each  can  only  be  defined  by  admitting 
the  possibility  of  just  such  a  change.  The  water,  once 


126    THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

absorbed  by  the  wood  of  the  desk,  changes  the  desk* 
But  the  absorption  itself  is  due  to  certain  changes 
occurring  in  the  temperature,  movement,  density  of  the 
water  or  of  its  vapor.  The  man  in  China  who  may 
become  my  enemy  or  my  neighbor  is  already  such  that 
certain  changes  in  him,  if  they  occurred,  would  not  be 
indifferent  to  me.  This  possibility  already  makes  part 
of  his  being.  Furthermore,  in  our  ordinary  world  of 
experience,  beings  like  meteors  and  planets,  water  and 
wood,  men  and  other  men,  viz.  beings  that  on  occasion 
may  come  into  a  very  obvious  connection,  are  already, 
even  before  their  so-called  actual  linkage,  truly  related, 
yes,  linked  to  one  another,  by  space,  by  time,  by  physical 
and  moral  ties.  What  happens  when  we  say  that  they 
pass  from  mutual  independence  to  linkage,  is  really  that 
we  find  them,  in  our  experience,  passing  from  relations 
whose  importance  is  merely  to  us  less  obvious,  into 
relations  of  more  obvious  human  interest.  But  now  the 
relations  of  an  object  in  ordinary  experience  make  parts 
of  the  object  itself.  A  change  in  these  relations  would 
result  from  the  change  of  other  objects.  Hence  these 
empirical  objects  are  never  known  as  independent.  If 
I  am  already  related  to  the  drops  of  water  now  in  the 
ocean,  to  the  meteors  that  might  become  visible  to  me,  to 
men  whom  I  might  come  to  know,  then  you  can  never 
say  that  experience  proves  me  to  be  independent  of  the 
existence  of  those  as  yet  unobserved  relations.  What 
experience  can  show  is  only  that  a  certain  mutual 
dependence  of  objects  may  long  remain  unobserved  by 
us  men,  until  this  or  that  meteor-flash  in  the  heavens, 
or  consequence  of  the  damp  weather,  or  meeting  with  a 


THE  INDEPENDENT  BEINGS  121 

man  from  far  lands,  shows  us  how  important  even  the 
remotest  and  heretofore  least  obvious  empirical  relation 
may  at  any  moment  become. 

Our  human  experience,  then,  never  shows  us  how 
beings  would  behave  if  they  were  mutually  independent, 
in  the  ideal  sense  of  our  exact  definition.  Unhampered, 
therefore,  by  empirical  guidance,  we  turn  back  to  the 
chill  realm  of  the  hypothetical  many  beings  of  our 
realist's  hypothesis.  These  many  beings  are  so  far  the 
creatures  of  an  exact  definition,  whose  consequences, 
purely  hypothetical  so  far,  we  want  to  predetermine. 
We  must  do  so  solely  upon  the  basis  of  our  realist's 
supposed  present  assumption.  And  hereupon,  assuming 
the  real  world  now  before  us  to  contain  many  mutually 
independent  beings,  I  will  prove  at  once  two  theses : 
(1)  The  many  different  real  beings  once  thus  defined 
can  never  come  to  acquire  or  later  to  be  conceived  as 
possessing  any  possible  real  linkages  or  connections, 
binding  these  different  beings  together;  and  so  these 
beings  will  remain  forever  wholly  sundered,  as  if  in 
different  worlds.  (2)  The  many  real  beings  thus  defined 
can  have  no  common  characters ;  they  are  wholly 
different  from  one  another.  Only  nominally  can  any 
common  characters  be  asserted  of  them. 

As  to  the  first  thesis:  If  I  am  defining  mere  ideas, 
apart  from  reality,  I  can  of  course  first  define  two 
objects  as  independent,  and  can  later  add  a  definition 
of  something  that  then  comes  to  link  them  together. 
But  if  first  I  define  two  objects  as  so  far  quite  inde- 
pendent of  one  another  in  essence,  and  if  I  next  define 
each  of  them  severally  as  real,  apart  from  and  inde- 


128    THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

pendently  of  all  ideas,  I  have,  once  for  all,  in  my  real 
world  of  objects,  two  beings,  each  so  far  quite  separate 
from  the  other,  and  each,  by  hypothesis,  a  complete 
instance  of  a  reality,  so  far  as  concerns  its  independence 
of  the  other.  If  hereupon  there  is  later  to  appear  in 
my  real  world  any  so-called  link  or  tie  between  the 
,  —  any  so-called  causal  linkage,  or  spatial  connection, 
or  temporal  relation,  then  this  so-called  linkage  will  be 
a  new  fact,  not  logically  involved  in  the  definition  of 
either  of  these  real  beings,  in  so  far  as  they  were  first 
declared  to  be  real.  For,  by  hypothesis,  neither  of  the 
two,  as  first  defined  and  as  then  declared  to  be  indepen- 
dently real,  possessed,  as  far  as  the  definition  yet  went, 
any  character  already  involving  a  tie  with  the  other. 
For  each,  consistently  with  its  definite  nature,  might 
so  far  remain  unchanged  if  the  other  wholly  vanished. 
But  then  at  once  it  follows,  that  the  new  real  being, 
the  so-called  link,  when  it  comes  to  light,  is  as  truly 
and  as  much  another  being  as  the  two  beings  were 
originally  diverse  from  each  other.  For  if  before  the 
link  came  to  light  the  completely  defined  beings  were 
real  but  not  yet  defined  as  linked  together,  the  link, 
when  it  comes,  will  be  another  new  being.  Furthermore, 
the  link  will  be  a  fact,  logically  independent  of  both 
of  the  original  beings.  For  as  another  being,  a  new 
fact,  it  will  be,  by  the  very  definition  of  what  constitutes 
another  being,  as  independent  of  them,  as  each  of  them 
is  essentially  independent  of  the  other.  It  follows  that 
the  so-called  link  is  no  link  except  in  name,  and  can 
never  come  to  be  one;  it  is  simply  a  third  being,  inde- 
pendent of  both  of  them,  and  not  yet  linked  to  either 


THE  INDEPENDENT  BEINGS  129 

of  the  two.  This  analysis  holds  of  every  possible  link 
that  is  secondarily  to  bind  together  any  two  of  the  many 
beings  that  were  declared  to  be  primarily  independent. 
Thus  the  many  cannot  be  linked  as  even  the  most  widely 
sundered  empirical  objects  are  always  found  to  be  linked, 
even  at  the  very  moment  when  you  first  observe  their 
relations.  The  realist's  many  beings,  as  defined,  are 
defined  as  wholly  disconnected  ;  and  they  must  remain 
so.  You  cannot  first  say  of  them,  for  instance,  that  they 
are  logically  independent,  and  then  truly  add  that  never- 
theless they  are  really  and  causally  linked.  No  two  of 
them  are  in  the  same  space ;  for  space  would  be  a  link. 
And  just  so,  no  two  are  in  the  same  time  ;  no  two  are 
in  any  physical  connection  ;  no  two  are  parts  of  any 
really  same  whole.  The  mutual  independence,  if  once 
real,  and  real  as  defined,  cannot  later  be  changed  to  any 
form  of  mutual  dependence. 

And  now  for  the  second  thesis.  In  our  ordinary  experi- 
ence we  often,  as  a  fact,  observe  that  two  objects  have 
some  character,  as  we  say, "  in  common."  We  call  this 
the  "  same  "  character,  quality  or  feature,  present  in  both 
of  them.  Thus  in  experience,  what  is  called  the  same 
redness  can  appear  in  two  cherries.  The  old  controversy 
about  uuiversals  has  made  familiar  the  question  whether 
that  which  is  truly  the  same  can  ever  really  form  part  of 
two  different  beings.  How  this  question  is  to  be  answered 
when  it  concerns  the  structure  of  that  organic  whole, 
that  realm  of  mutual  interdependence  called  our  con- 
crete experience,  we  shall  later  see.  For  the  moment  we 
have  only  to  consider  such  a  question  as  applying  solely 
to  the  independent  beings  which  the  realist  has  defined. 


130     THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

Take  any  two  such  independent  beings.  Then,  as  I  observe, 
these  two  beings  can  have  no  real  quality  or  feature  what- 
ever that  is  actually  common  to  both  of  them,  or  that  is, 
apart  from  name  and  from  seeming,  the  same  in  both  of 
them,  beyond  the  mere  fact  that  each  exists. 

For  suppose  that  they  are  first  said  to  possess  in  com- 
mon a  quality.  Suppose,  namely,  that,  to  an  onlooker,  they 
both  seem  red,  or  round,  like  two  cherries,  but  that  as  a  fact 
they  are  independent  beings.  Call  this  apparently  common 
quality  Q.  Then  let  one  of  the  two  beings  be  destroyed. 
By  hypothesis,  no  change  whatever  need  occur  in  the  other 
being.  And  this  means,  as  we  now  know,  that  no  character 
or  relation,  visible  or  invisible,  which  is  in  any  wise  essen- 
tial to  the  first  definition  of  the  being  that  is  supposed  to 
remain,  is  in  the  least  altered  when  its  fellow  vanishes. 
Q,  then,  the  quality  supposed  to  be  the  same  in  both  beings, 
survives  unchanged  in  the  being  that  does  riot  vanish. 

But  now,  if  one  man  survived  a  shipwreck  in  which 
another  was  drowned,  could  you  then  call  the  survivor  the 
same  as  the  drowned  man  ?  But  by  hypothesis,  the  qual- 
ity Q,  together  with  all  relationships  essential  into  its  real- 
ity, survives  unchanged  in  the  being  that  remains,  while 
what  is  called  the  same  quality  in  the  other  being  has 
passed  away. 

But  our  realist,  unwilling  to  concede  this  last  conse- 
quence, may  hereupon  say  that  what  he  meant  was  that 
the  quality  Q  in  the  two  beings  was  partly  the  same,  and 
partly  not  the  same.  This  way  of  escape  I  meet,  how- 
ever, with  the  simple  challenge :  Leave  aside  that  which 
is  in  part.  Come  to  the  ultimate  fact.  If  something  is 
only  partly  the  same  in  your  two  independent  beings, 


THE  INDEPENDENT  BEINGS  131 

then  some  part  of  the  part,  some  aspect  of  the  aspect, 
must  be  really  and  ultimately  quite  the  same.  Name  me 
any  feature  whatever  in  one  of  these  two  beings,  —  any 
character  sensuous  or  supersensuous  of  which  you  will 
say :  It  is  a  common  feature,  really  the  same  in  these  two 
beings.  Then  in  my  turn  I  will  show  you  that  just  that 
feature  is  not  the  same,  for  I  will  suppose  one  of  the  two 
objects  destroyed,  as  by  hypothesis  I  have  a  right  to  do. 
I  will  then  find  the  other  in  all  its  features  quite  un- 
changed, as  by  hypothesis  I  can  do.  And  so  I  will  show 
that  what  was  destroyed  in  the  one  object  cannot  be  the 
same  as  what  survives  unchanged  in  the  other,  precisely 
as  the  survivors  of  a  shipwreck  cannot  be  the  same  as 
the  drowned.  All  this,  you  must  remember,  I  assert  upon 
the  one  basis  of  the  realistic  hypothesis  about  the  many 
independent  beings  as  stated  above. 

It  follows  that,  as  was  to  be  proved,  the  many  entities 
of  this  realistic  world  have  no  features  in  common.  If 
they  appear  to  have,  this  is  seeming,  is  "  mere  name  and 
form,"  as  the  Hindoo  philosophers  would  say.  In  brief, 
such  sameness  is  not  at  all  real.  The  appearance  called 
"  similarity  "  has  no  real  basis  except  when  we  are  dealing 
with  the  aspects  or  functions  that  may  exist  within  what  our 
present  arbitrary  definition  would  call  a  single  real  being. 

I  sum  up  the  results  of  these  two  inquiries  concerning 
the  world  of  the  many  independent  reals  by  asserting 
simply:  The  real  beings,  if  in  the  present  sense  many, 
namely,  if  real  beings  thus  logically  independent  of  one 
another,  have  no  common  features,  no  ties,  no  true  rela- 
tions ;  they  are  sundered  from  one  another  by  absolutely 
impassable  chasms ;  they  can  never  come  to  get  either  ties 


132    THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

or  community  of  nature ;  they  are  not  in  the  same  space, 
nor  in  the  same  time,  nor  in  the  same  natural  or  spiritual 
order. 

VI 

The  doctrine  of  the  Many,  upon  a  basis  of  the  arbitrarily 
assumed  definition  of  many,  thus  becomes,  in  seeming, 
paradoxical  enough.  Historically,  Realism  has  more  than 
once  assumed,  however,  almost  this  uncanny  form;  and 
the  mere  seeming  of  paradox  is  in  itself  no  refutation  of 
a  philosophical  doctrine.  Yet  before  we  press  this  very 
paradox  to  its  final  extreme,  we  must  first  see  whether 
the  realist  is  in  any  way  forced  to  persist  in  defining  his 
real  Beings  as  in  this  sense  many  at  all.  Have  we  not 
ourselves  admitted  the  possibility  that,  in  one  real  Being, 
unity  and  multiplicity,  for  all  that  yet  we  see,  can  be 
reconciled?  The  Many,  if  once  irrevocably  defined  as 
real,  and  as  essentially  independent,  can  never  again  be 
linked  by  external  ties.  They  indeed  thenceforth  remain 
strangers.  "But  surely,"  one  may  say,  "the  realist  is 
not  forced  to  remain  in  so  scattered  a  world.  He  can 
still  pass  over  to  the  other  hypothesis.  He  can  say :  '  My 
world  is  One  Being,  a  single,  real,  but  perhaps  an  inter- 
nally complex,  yes  an  infinitely  wealthy  Being,  whose 
various  aspects  and  functions  are  not  logically  indepen- 
dent, but  are  linked  in  a  system,  so  that  fully  to  define 
one  part  or  region  would  be  to  define  something  of  the 
essence  of  all,  and  so  that  no  portion  can  indefinitely 
alter  or  wholly  vanish  without  some  implied  change,  how- 
ever minute,  in  all  the  other  parts.  Diversity  there  is 
in  my  world,  but  no  sundering  of  entities.'  Why  may 


THE  INDEPENDENT  BEINGS  133 

not  a  realist  take  refuge  in  this  modified  monism,  —  not  in 
the  Eleatic  Being,  or  even  in  the  Substance  of  Spinoza, 
but  in  the  assurance  that  the  All,  however  manifold  and 
full  of  contrast,  is  still  an  interrelated  whole  ?  " 

Why  not,  indeed  ?  Ah,  —  but  just  as  we  are  about  to 
enter,  with  the  realist,  to  explore  this  harbor  of  refuge,  we 
suddenly  observe  that  the  realist  has  long  since  care- 
fully closed  the  channel  of  entrance  with  a  wholly  im- 
passable blockade.  For  let  us  remember  that,  as  we 
observed  before,  there  are  already  at  least  Two  genuinely 
and  absolutely  independent  real  Beings  in  the  realistic 
world. 

For  now  comes  a  single  proposition  to  which  I  have 
already  made  reference.  Consider  that  "idea  of  0,"  of 
which  any  object  o  was  to  be  independent.  Let  that  idea 
be  the  realist's  own  idea,  when  he  talks  of  any  indepen- 
dent object.  I  ask  the  realist:  "Is  not  your  own  idea 
itself  a  real  being,  or  at  least  a  part  of  one  ?  Come  let  us 
reason  together.  If  you,  the  realist,  are  a  being  indepen- 
dent of  my  idea  of  you,  then  are  not  your  own  ideas  a 
part  of  your  own  independent  being  ?  Are  not  your  ideas 
then  real?  If,  therefore,  your  object  o  yonder  is  inde- 
pendent of  your  ideas,  are  not  your  ideas,  in  so  far  as  they 
also  are  parts  of  an  entity  and  so  have  being,  independent 
of  o  itself?  If  o  vanished,  could  not  your  idea  consis- 
tently be  conceived  as  remaining,  as  a  psychical  fact,  just 
what  it  now  is?  Yes,  ideas,  even  the  most  false  ones, 
are  facts  in  the  mental  world.  The  realist  must  call  them 
real  in  his  sense,  or  abandon  his  system.  And  by  the 
very  first  hypothesis  of  the  system,  since  independence  is 
a  mutual  relation,  the  idea  and  its  object  o  are  mutually 


134    THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

and  typically  a  pair  of  independent  beings.  Now  the 
thesis  that,  if  reality  means  independence,  the  ideas  too, 
of  anybody  you  please,  are  themselves  existent  entities, 
or  are  parts  of  an  entity  existent  and  independent,  con- 
stitutes what  I  may  call  the  Forgotten  Thesis  of  most 
realistic  systems.  The  whole  present  argument  depends 
upon  simply  declining  to  countenance  that  forgetfulness. 
An  idea  has  Real  Being  if  anything  has  Being.  And 
whatever  existence  means,  that  an  idea  also  possesses. 

A  knowing  process  and  its  independent  object,  con- 
stitute then  the  irreducible  minimum  of  the  realistic 
world.  But  herewith  I  propose  a  perfectly  simple  and 
final  procedure.  I  propose  to  treat  this  pair  of  entities 
precisely  as  we  have  just  treated  any  two  independently 
real  beings  in  general.  For  this  pair  are  not  only  the 
so-called  idea  and  object;  they  are  also  a  pair  of 
mutually  independent  entities.  We  must  not  forget 
this  aspect.  The  two  theses  just  proved  are  now  merely 
to  be  applied  to  them.  The  crisis  of  the  realist's  destiny 
is  reached.  The  doom  of  his  world  is  at  hand. 

Object  and  idea,  viewed  as  entities,  are  twain.  Real- 
ism began  by  saying  so.  So  much  is  nominated  in  the 
bond.  The  realist  shall  have  his  pound  of  flesh,  although 
we  can  grant  him  indeed  not  one  drop  of  blood  for  all 
his  world.  By  the  original  hypothesis  either  any  indi- 
vidual idea,  or  o,  the  object  of  that  idea,  could  without 
contradiction  be  conceived  as  changing,  or  as  vanish- 
ing, without  any  logically  necessary  change  in  the  other 
member  of  the  pair.  Therefore,  according  to  what  we 
have  now  shown  to  be  the  case  with  any  two  independent 
realities,  the  idea  of  o  and  <?,  as  real  beings,  not  only 


THE  INDEPENDENT  BEINGS  135 

have,  as  first  defined,  no  connection  with  each  other, 
but  they  can  never  get  any  possible  linkage  or  relation. 
All  their  connections  are  nominal.  As  idea,  the  idea 
was  said  to  have  o  for  its  object.  But  the  idea  is  an 
entity.  It  can  have  nothing  to  do  with  the  other  entity 
o.  These  two  are  not  in  the  same  space,  nor  in  the 
same  time,  nor  in  the  same  natural  order,  nor  in  the 
same  spiritual  order.  They  have  nothing  in  common, 
neither  quality  nor  worth,  neither  form  nor  content, 
neither  truth  or  meaning.  No  causality  links  them.  If 
you  say  so,  you  again  use  mere  names.  No  will  genu- 
inely can  relate  them.  That  they  appear  to  have  con- 
nections is  simply  a  matter  of  false  seeming.  Our  origi- 
nal definition  called  the  one  of  them  an  idea  relating  to 
the  object  o.  We  now  know  that  such  an  expression 
was  a  mere  name.  The  idea  has  assumed  as  idea  an 
obligation  that  as  independent  entity  it  cannot  pay.  It 
has  no  true  relation  with  0,  and  o  has  no  community 
with  the  idea.  To  speak  of  any  being  not  o  itself  as 
if  it  were  really  an  idea  of  <?,  is  as  if  you  spoke  of  the 
square  root  of  an  odor,  or  of  the  logarithm  of  an  angel. 
For  idea  and  object  are  two  real  beings.  Their  irrev- 
ocable sundering  no  new  definition  of  their  essence 
can  now  join  again.  For  reality,  in  this  doctrine,  is 
independent  of  all  definitions  that  could  be  made  after 
the  fact.  Relations  that  could  link  the  two  entities 
would  merely  prove  to  be  new  independent  beings  other 
than  either  of  them. 

Nor  is  this  all.  The  idea  here  in  question  is  any 
idea  or  opinion,  o  is  any  object.  Now  a  realist's  own 
theory  is  an  idea  or  opinion.  And  the  world  was  to  be 

c,4 


136    THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

his  object.  Our  perfectly  general  result,  true  of  all 
ideas,  applies  of  course  to  the  group  of  ideas  called  the 
realistic  theory.  As  an  entity,  the  realist  is  an  indepen- 
dent being.  His  ideas,  as  part  of  his  being,  can  have 
nothing  to  do  with  any  object  that  exists  independently 
of  himself  or  themselves.  The  realistic  theory,  then, 
as  we  now  know,  by  its  own  explicit  consequences, 
and  just  because  its  real  objects  are  totally  independent 
of  its  ideas,  has  nothing  to  do  with  any  independently  real 
object,  and  has  no  relation  to  the  independent  external 
world  that  its  own  account  defines.  Nor  can  it  ever  come 
to  get  such  a  relation.  No  realist,  as  he  himself  now  must 
consistently  maintain,  either  knows  any  independent 
being,  or  has  ever,  in  idea,  found  himself  related  to  one, 
or  has  ever  made  any  reference  to  such  a  being,  or  has 
ever  formed  or  expressed  an  opinion  regarding  one,  or, 
in  his  own  sense  of  the  word  "  real,"  really  believes  that 
there  is  one. 

VII 

And  thus,  suddenly  at  one  stroke,  the  entire  realistic 
fabric,  with  all  those  "suns  and  milky  ways"  to  which 
Schopenhauer,  in  a  famous  passage,  so  prettily  referred, 
vanishes,  —  leaving  not  a  wrack,  not  even  a  single 
lonely  Unknowable,  behind.  For  an  Unknowable,  too, 
would  be  an  independent  real  object.  Our  present  idea 
of  it  would  have  to  refer  to  this  object,  if  it  were  real ; 
and  no  idea,  as  we  know,  can  refer  to  any  independent 
reality,  since  in  order  for  such  reference  to  be  itself  real, 
two  irrevocably  sundered  beings  would  have  to  destroy 


THE  INDEPENDENT  BEINGS  137 

the  chasm  whose  presence   is   determined   by   their  own 
very  essence. 

In  brief,  the  realm  of  a  consistent  Realism  is  not  the 
realm  of  One  nor  yet  the  realm  of  Many,  it  is  the  realm 
of  absolutely  Nothing.  This  judgment  is  not  due  to  us. 
The  consistent  realist  merely  happens  to  remember  that 
his  ideas  too  are,  by  his  own  hypothesis,  existences ;  that 
also,  by  his  own  hypothesis,  the  objects  of  his  ideas  are 
other  existences  independent  of  his  ideas ;  that  this  in- 
dependence is  a  mutual  relation ;  and  finally,  that  two 
beings  once  defined,  in  his  way,  as  independent,  are 
wholly  without  inner  links,  and  can  never  afterwards 
be  linked  by  any  external  ties.  The  consistent  realist 
remembers  all  this.  And  then  he  at  once  observes  that 
if  this  be  true,  his  own  theory,  being  an  idea,  and  at 
the  same  time  an  independent  entity,  has  no  relation  to 
any  other  entity,  and  so  no  relation  to  any  real  world 
of  the  sort  that  the  theory  itself  defines.  He  observes 
then  that  his  whole  theory  has  defined  precisely  a  realm 
of  absolute  void.  Nothing  can  be  real  merely  in  his 
sense. 

But  what  then  is  left  us,  if  the  realistic  definition 
of  Being  simply  and  rigidly  applied,  destroys  its  own 
entire  realm,  denies  its  own  presuppositions,  and  shows 
us  as  its  one  unquestionable  domain  the  meaningless 
wilderness  of  absolute  Nothingness.  Where,  then,  is  our 
real  world? 

There  is  left  us,  I  reply,  just  this  world  of  our  daily 
experience,  with  precisely  its  stars  and  milky  ways,  with 
its  human  life  and  its  linkages  —  this  world,  only  given 
already  a  deeper  meaning  by  this  very  study.  For  now 


138    THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

we  already  begin  to  see,  as  from  afar,  the  realm  of  truth 
that  is  not  independent  of,  but  the  very  heart  and  life 
of  this  fragmentary  finite  experience  of  ours.  We  begin 
to  see  what  later  we  shall  view  nearer  by,  —  the  realm 
of  truth  where  indeed  nothing,  not  the  least  idea,  not 
the  most  transient  event,  is  absolutely  independent  of 
the  knowledge  that  relates  to  it,  or  of  any  other  fact 
in  the  entire  universe.  In  this  realm  it  does,  then,  in 
the  long  run,  make  a  difference  to  all  objects,  divine  or 
material,  whether  they  are  known  or  not,  by  any  being. 
That  a  relative  independence,  and  that  both  individu- 
ality and  freedom  have  their  concrete  meaning  in  this 
truer  realm,  we  shall  indeed  in  due  season  learn.  But 
what  we  now  learn  is  that  any  definition  of  absolutely 
independent  beings,  beings  that  could  change  or  vanish 
without  any  result  whatever  for  their  fellows,  is,  in  all 
regions  of  the  universe,  natural  or  spiritual,  a  hopeless 
contradiction.  There  are  no  such  mutually  indifferent 
beings.  But  this  other  realm,  where  no  fact,  however 
slight,  transient,  fleeting,  is  absolutely  independent  of 
any  of  its  fellow  facts,  this  is  the  realm  where  when 
one  member  suffers  others  suffer  also,  where  no  sparrow 
falls  to  the  ground  without  the  insight  of  One  who 
knows,  and  where  the  vine  and  the  branches  eternally 
flourish  in  a  sacred  unity.  That  is  the  city  which  hath 
foundations,  and  thither  our  argument  already,  amidst 
these  very  storms  of  negation,  is  carrying  us  over  the 
waves  of  doubt. 


LECTURE  IV 


LECTURE  IV 

THE  UNITY   OF  BEING,    AND  THE  MYSTICAL  INTER- 
PRETATION 

OF  the  four  historical  conceptions  of  Being  we  have 
now  expounded  in  a  general  way,  and  with  reference  to 
their  history,  two  conceptions,  that  of  Realism,  and  that  of 
Mysticism ;  and  of  these  two  we  have  critically  examined 
one,  namely,  the  realistic  conception.  If  any  one  remarks 
that  the  sole  result  of  our  foregoing  discussion  was  a  mere 
negation,  a  mere  rejection  of  an  extreme  form  of  realistic 
dualism,  and  that  such  a  result  is  not  yet  positively 
enlightening,  then  I  myself  so  far  agree  with  the  observa- 
tion. It  is  true  that  we  ended  the  last  lecture  with  an 
assertion  of  the  unity  of  Being.  But  if  it  be  here  further 
objected  that  the  mere  fact  of  unity  is  of  small  importance 
unless  one  comes  to  learn  of  what  nature  the  unity  is,  and 
how  it  bears  itself  towards  the  varieties  of  our  wealthy  life, 
towards  the  vast  phenomenal  diversities  of  physical  facts, 
towards  the  contrasts  and  tragedies  of  existence,  towards 
that  relative  independence  of  moral  individuals  upon 
whose  recognition  all  modern  civilization  depends,  —  then 
I  fully  admit  the  force  of  this  objection.  In  fact,  the 
explicit  outcome  of  our  examination  of  Realism,  at  the 
last  time,  merely  so  far  opposed  one  abstraction  by 
another,  and  we  ended,  for  the  moment,  in  a  denial  of 
dualism,  with  a  hint  added  of  a  coming  theory  of  the 

141 


142    THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

genuine  unity  of  Being.  Before  we  proceed,  however, 
to  a  closer  study  of  the  first  historical  rival  of  Realism, 
namely,  to  the  Mystical  definition  of  the  ontological  predi- 
cate, something  is  still  needed  by  way  of  a  reminder  of  our 
precise  present  position. 

I 

The  genuine  essence  of  Realism  consists,  as  we  saw,  in 
defining  any  being  as  real  precisely  in  so  far  as  in  essence 
it  is  wholly  independent  of  ideas  that,  while  other  than 
itself,  refer  to  it.  We  insisted,  at  the  last  time,  that  this 
thesis  implies  an  absolute  dualism  within  the  world  of  real 
being,  since  an  idea  also  is  an  existent  fact,  and  is  as 
independently  real  as  is  the  supposed  independent  object. 
No  realist  can  consistently  reduce  the  world  to  one  inde- 
pendently real  Being,  however  complex  and  wealthy  in 
inner  structure  this  One  Being  might  be  permitted  to 
become.  At  least  two  mutually  independent  Beings,  such 
that  either  of  them,  by  its  changing  or  by  its  vanishing, 
would  imply  no  correspondent  change  in  the  other, 
remain  in  the  realist's  world.  Moreover,  these  two  beings, 
once  defined  and  real,  would  forbid  us  to  speak  afterwards 
of  their  having  any  real  tie,  or  real  fashion  of  cooperation, 
unless  this  so-called  tie  is  really  a  new  fact,  independent 
of  both  the  beings  that  are  to  be  linked.  Such  a  tie,  how- 
ever, is  a  tie  only  in  name.  If  beings  are,  like  the  objects 
of  our  ordinary  experience,  already  interdependent,  they 
can  indeed  consistently  assume  new  ties,  as  young  people 
who  are  already  members  of  the  same  social  order  or  of 
the  same  human  family  can  marry.  But  in  the  supposed, 
and  distinctly  not  empirical  realm,  to  which  the  consistent 


THE   UNITY   OF   BEING  143 

realist  finds  himself  driven,  the  two  independent  beings  of 
which  his  world,  if  reduced  to  its  lowest  terms,  consists, 
have  no  ties,  and  can  never  get  any.  For  a  similar  reason, 
they  have  no  common  characters,  and  can  never  get  any. 
The  inevitable  result  is  that  the  very  presupposition  of 
the  entire  doctrine  is  contradicted  by  its  outcome.  For  if 
idea  and  object  have  no  ties  and  no  common  characters 
whatever,  they  simply  cannot  be  related  as  idea  and  object. 
The  consequence  is  that  both  the  realistic  definition,  and 
the  totally  independent  beings,  prove  to  be  contradictory, 
and  vanish  together,  leaving  us,  as  our  result  so  far,  the 
thesis  that,  if  the  Other  which  our  finite  thinking,  in  its 
disquietude,  seeks  to  attain,  is  to  be  defined  at  all,  it  can- 
not be  totally  independent  of  the  thought  which  defines  it, 
or  remain  unchanged  if  that  thought  essentially  alters  or 
vanishes.  The  ultimate  dualism  of  the  realistic  view  is 
false  and  must  be  abandoned.  This,  so  far,  is  all  that  we 
have  definitely  made  out  concerning  the  conditions  of  a 
consistent  definition  of  real  Being. 

But  hereupon  we  are  brought  face  to  face  with  that 
ancient  rival  of  the  realistic  definition.  And  this  is  Mys- 
ticism. If  the  dualism  is  to  be  abandoned,  must  we  in- 
stead define  Being  as  an  absolute  and  simple  unity? 
Must  we  say,  the  phrase  "  to  be  real "  means  something  that 
cannot  be  asserted  of  any  object  whatever,  so  long  as  this 
object  is  defined  through  ideas  that  refer  to  it,  or  so  long 
as  the  ideas  themselves,  with  their  endless  search  for  the 
Other,  trouble  our  consciousness,  emphasize  differences, 
and  by  their  very  striving  after  something  beyond,  keep 
our  knowledge  from  its  true  goal?  Must  we  insist  that 
only  such  an  object  as  quenches  thought  through  the 


144    THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS   OF  BEING 

presence  of  a  single  and  absolutely  immediate  truth  is  an 
object  whereof  we  can  say :  It  is  ? 

II 

Just  such  a  view  is  of  the  essence  of  philosophical,  or 
of  the  truly  significant  historical  Mysticism.  By  this 
term  I  now  mean,  as  you  know  from  our  second  lecture, 
not  a  vaguely  applied  name  for  superstition  in  general,  or 
for  beliefs  in  spirits,  in  special  revelations,  and  in  magic, 
but  a  perfectly  recognizable  speculative  tendency,  observ- 
able in  very  various  ages  and  nations,  and  essentially 
characterized  by  the  meaning  that  it  gives  to  the  ontolog- 
ical  predicate. 

For  the  mystic,  according  to  the  genuinely  historical 
definition  of  what  constitutes  speculative  Mysticism,  to  be 
real  means  to  be  in  such  wise  Immediate  that,  in  the 
presence  of  this  immediacy,  all  thought  and  all  ideas, 
absolutely  satisfied,  are  quenched,  so  that  the  finite  search 
ceases,  and  the  Other  is  no  longer  another,  but  is  abso- 
lutely found.  The  object  which  fulfils  this  definition, 
and  which  is  therefore  worthy  to  be  called  real,  is  of 
necessity  in  itself  One  and  only  One ;  since  variety,  when 
consciously  faced,  calls  forth  thought,  and  arouses 
demands  for  characterization  and  explanation.  In  count- 
less ways,  however,  this  One  real  object  of  the  mystic's 
quest  may  be  approached,  by  those  finite  thinkers  who, 
in  their  ignorance,  still  seek  their  Other, — in  countless 
ways,  whose  only  common  character  is  that,  the  nearer 
you  come  to  the  goal,  the  less  the  varieties  and  opposi- 
tions of  the  world  of  ordinary  thinking  distract  you,  and 
the  more  you  are  in  possession  of  something  that  is  present, 


THE  UNITY  OF  BEING  145 

given,  satisfying,  peaceful.  If  a  realist,  viewing  your 
progress  from  without,  observes  hereupon  that  you  are 
simply  ignoring  the  manifold  realities  of  the  finite  world, 
you  reply  that  those  so-called  realities,  just  because  they 
are  many,  and  because  they  pretend  to  be  independent 
beings,  are  illusory,  and  that  in  forsaking  such  a  world, 
you  simply  spare  yourself  errors.  As,  in  the  world  of  the 
supposed  independent  beings,  nothing  is  real,  you  care 
nothing  for  that  world.  If  the  realist,  hearing  that  you  seek 
something  called  Unity,  reminds  you  that  realists  also 
may  undertake  to  be  monistic  in  their  view  of  reality,  you 
reply  that,  for  reasons  now  sufficiently  set  forth  in  our 
own  discussion,  what  is  One  can  never  be  independent  of 
the  insight  that  knows  it,  and  that  therefore  the  only 
place  to  look  for  unity  is  within,  at  the  heart  of  experience, 
not  without  and  beyond  where  the  realist  looks  for  Being. 
If  a  worldly  critic,  wondering  at  your  pretensions,  asks 
you  how  you  dare  to  assert  that  just  you,  in  your  loneli- 
ness, can  ever  win  an  immediate  relation  to  the  final  truth 
of  all  the  universe,  can  ever  find  God  within  your  poor 
self,  you  reply  that  just  in  so  far  as  you  have  approached 
the  goal  most  nearly,  you,  the  supposed  finite  thinker,  the 
private  individual,  have  simply  ceased  to  be  known,  even 
to  yourself,  so  that  not  your  private  self,  but  the  Absolute, 
alone,  will  remain  when  the  goal  is  reached.  For  your 
very  discovery  of  that  which  is,  would  involve  the  forget- 
ting of  your  finite  personality  as  an  illusion,  an  error,  an 
evil  dream. 

If  now  a  Protagorean  sceptic,  asserting  that  Man  is  the 
measure  of  all  things,  hereupon  observes  that  indeed  Real- 
ism was  false,  and  that  nothing  is,  except  what  is  felt,  at  the 


146     THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

moment  when  it  is  felt;  and  if  such  a  sceptic,  also  talking  oi 
the  real  as  the  present,  now  insists  that,  for  this  very  reason, 
your  own  search  for  the  Mystic  One  is  idle,  since  what  em- 
pirically is  felt,  —  now  here  and  now  there,  —  is  not  one,  but 
many,  and  since,  as  such  a  Protagorean  sceptic  will  assert, 
whoever  feels  anything  whatever,  has  merely  his  own  little 
share  or  case  of  immediate  Being  present  to  himself,  —  then 
even  this  apparently  dangerous  foe  of  the  mystical  faith 
meets  with  an  easy  answer,  if  once  you  have  won  the  gen- 
uinely mystical  spirit.  For  you  in  reply  ask  this  critic 
whence  he  gets  the  assurance  of  the  being  of  his  various  men, 
of  his  diverse  experiences,  of  his  many  human  feelings  and 
points  of  view.  Has  he  himself  experienced  immediately, 
or  felt  at  any  one  moment  what  the  supposed  other  real 
men  and  women  feel  ?  Has  he  himself  ever  felt  anything 
purely  immediate  that  involved  two  or  more  separate 
points  of  view?  Is  his  direct  experience  that  of  many 
men  ?  If  he  replies  that  common  sense  knows  the  many 
men  with  many  minds,  the  countless  feelings  and  points 
of  view,  to  be  real  facts;  then  he  has  forsaken  his  own 
form  of  scepticism,  even  by  his  very  appeal  to  commonly 
accepted  truth.  He  returns  to  his  illusions ;  you  let  him 
alone.  If  he  declares  that  the  many  points  of  view  are 
independently  real  facts  of  being,  he  is  a  realist,  and  is 
now  already  refuted.  If  he  merely  says  that  he  is  a  scep- 
tic because  he  feels  that  his  feeling,  although  present,  is 
not  absolute,  and  that  it  is  to  him  just  now  as  if  there  were 
other  points  of  view  than  his  own,  you  reply,  as  a  Mystic, 
that  in  thus  confessing  his  scepticism  to  be  identical  with 
his  dissatisfaction  regarding  his  own  present  state,  he  con- 
fesses also  that  he  is  not  lost  in  the  presence  of  a  satisfying 


THE  UNITY   OF  BEING  147 

immediate  fact.  But  a  fact  not  satisfying,  is  not  a  pure 
fact.  For,  as  you  will  here  maintain,  a  fact  not  wholly 
immediate,  —  by  reason  of  the  very  dissatisfaction  mingled 
with  it,  —  sends  you  elsewhere  for  a  presentation  that  you 
do  not  possess,  and  thus  declares  itself  not  yet  the  real. 
In  none  of  these  ways,  then,  will  you  allow  yourself  to  be 
distracted  from  your  goal  by  the  objectors. 

And  finally,  if  your  critic  asks,  why  then,  since  you 
believe  in  no  variety  of  experiences  or  points  of  view  as 
genuinely  real,  you  still  argue  with  your  critics  as  if  they 
were  real,  disagree  with  other  points  of  view  as  if  they 
existed,  thoughtfully  maintain  your  own  case  as  if  thoughts 
were  valuable  aids,  and  confess  your  own  experiences  as  if 
you,  too,  the  private  finite  self,  were  a  fact  in  a  genuine 
world,  then  for  this  objection  also  you  are  prepared.  For 
you  will  now  insist  that  while  you  know  what  true  Being 
in  general  is,  you  have  not  yet  won  the  presence  of  it,  so 
that,  like  any  other  imperfect  finite  thinker,  you  are  strug- 
gling with  illusions.  You  yourself,  as  finite  person,  your 
critic  as  another,  your  ideas  and  glimpses  as  various  seem- 
ing facts,  —  these  are  all  alike  illusions.  You  confess  this. 
You  lament  it.  You  could  be  bounded  in  a  nutshell  and 
count  yourself  king  of  infinite  space,  were  it  not  that  you 
have  just  these  bad  dreams  of  ordinary  error  and  finitude. 
Of  the  true  seer,  who  should  go  home  to  the  Immediate 
Presence,  one  could  say,  with  Shelley :  — 

"  Peace,  peace,  he  is  not  dead,  he  doth  not  sleep. 
He  hath  awakened  from  the  dream  of  life. 
'Tis  we,  who  lost  in  stormy  visions  keep 
With  phantoms  an  unprofitable  strife, 
And  in  mad  trance  strike  with  our  spirit's  knife 
Invulnerable  nothings." 


148     THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

Only,  as  mystic,  you  will  add  that  your  strife  is  made 
as  little  unprofitable  as  possible  if  steadfastly  you  so 
war  with  the  invulnerable  nothings  that  their  inner 
illusoriness  is  dwelt  upon,  their  contradictions  are  ex- 
posed, and  their  voices  are  thus  gradually  made  to  cease, 
until  at  last  the  lonely  stillness  of  the  Absolute  alone 
shall  be  left.  It  is  true  that  had  you  reached  this  per- 
fect peace,  we  should  no  longer  hear  from  you.  For 
the  mystic  abode  of  Being  is  the  silent  land.  They 
come  not  back  who  wander  thither.  For  they,  as  mere 
finite  thinkers,  as  seekers,  are  not  at  all,  when  once 
they  have  awakened  to  the  truth.  How  should  they 
return  ?  "  Believe  not  those  prattlers,"  says  one  often- 
quoted  mystical  word,  "  who  boast  that  they  know  God. 
Who  knows  him  —  is  silent." 

Ill 

For  us,  who  are  here  concerned  with  the  mystic's 
predicate,  and  not  yet  with  the  subject  to  which  it 
could  be  applied,  the  mystic's  mere  admission  that  he 
has  not  yet  reached  his  goal,  need  of  course  so  far  arouse 
no  objections  against  this  definition.  One  can  define 
what  it  is  to  be  without  asserting  that  he  has  yet 
faced  the  object  which  fulfils  the  definition.  No  real- 
ist supposes  himself  to  have  an  exhaustive  knowledge 
of  the  independent  reality,  just  as  no  mathematician 
hopes,  in  any  finite  time,  to  see  his  science  completed. 
Being  is  once  for  all,  to  a  finite  thinker,  at  least  in 
part,  the  Other  that  he  seeks.  The  case  of  the  mystic 
must  not  stand  or  fall  with  his  personal  perfection,  or 
with  his  winning  of  the  Other,  but  with  the  inner  con- 


THE  UNITY  OF  BEING  140 

sistency  of  his   definition,  and   its   adequacy  to  express 
the  constitution  of  our  search  for  truth. 

In  a  general  statement,  this  definition  is  now  once 
more  before  you.  Viewed  as  to  its  logical  relations 
with  its  rival,  the  position  of  Mysticism  should  prove, 
from  this  starting  point,  readily  comprehensible.  You 
may  remember  our  former  sketch  of  the  finite  situation 
that  sends  us  all  alike  looking  for  true  Being.  Data 
of  experience,  present  facts,  are  on  our  hands, — colors, 
sounds,  pains,  passions.  These  are  so  far  relatively  im- 
mediate ;  in  psychology  we  call  them  masses  of  sensa- 
tion or  of  feeling;  they  are  in  general  not  wholly  sat- 
isfactory, usually  perplexing,  often  very  tragic.  The 
mystic  would  insist  that  for  this  very  reason  they  are 
not  wholly  immediate.  In  our  more  clearly  conscious 
moments  they  constantly  stimulate  us  to  think  and  to 
act.  On  the  other  hand,  we  have  our  ideas.  These  too 
are,  in  one  aspect,  masses  of  relatively  immediate  data; 
for  they  are  present;  the  psychologists  would  find  their 
mere  contents,  in  general,  to  be  of  an  obviously  sen- 
sory type ;  they  come  and  go  in  their  own  way.  But 
then,  the  ideas  too  are  explicitly  and  obviously  facts 
that  are  not  merely  immediate.  They  are  contents  of 
thought  as  well  as  masses  of  feeling;  and  the  peculiar 
way  in  which  they  are  more  than  immediate  is  what 
makes  them  worthy  to  be  called  ideas.  And  as  con- 
tents of  thought,  as  ideas,  they  already  present  to  us, 
however  incompletely,  that  relative  fulfilment  of  pur- 
pose, that  partial  embodiment  of  meaning,  which  sets 
them  in  contrast  to  those  brute  facts  of  the  lower  forms 
of  immediacy,  those  meaningless  accidents  of  sensation, 


150     THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

which,  in  our  case,  always  accompany  them.  The  ideas 
thus  constitute  the  relatively  significant  aspect,  the  un- 
comprehended  brute  facts  present  the  relatively  mean- 
ingless aspect,  of  our  ordinary  and  momentary  con- 
scious life.  In  two  ways,  however,  is  the  resulting 
form  of  finite  consciousness  unsatisfactory:  first,  in  so 
far  as  its  finite  meanings,  even  where  as  nearly  present 
as  we  ever  get  them,  are  viewed  by  ourselves  as  incom- 
pletely present;  and,  secondly,  in  so  far  as  the  seem- 
ingly accidental  sensations  of  the  instant  are  relatively 
opposed  to  even  so  much  of  our  meaning  as  is  now  in 
sight,  so  that  our  sensations  tend,  as  we  say,  to  confuse 
or  to  puzzle  us.  This  doubly  unsatisfactory  form  of 
our  finite  consciousness  is  an  universal  character  with 
us  men  as  we  are.  Never  do  all  the  current  sensory 
experiences  completely  fuse  with  our  ideas,  so  as  sim- 
ply to  aid  in  developing  the  meaning  of  our  inner  life. 
Never  do  our  passing  meanings  get  at  any  instant  pre- 
sented to  us,  in  their  own  adequate  wholeness,  even  as 
so-called  "mere"  ideas.  We  mean  more  than  we  find. 
We  find  also  data  foreign  to  those  that  we  mean. 

The  advantage  of  this  way  of  stating  the  universal 
form  of  our  finite  human  consciousness  lies  in  the  fact 
that  this,  our  fashion  of  statement,  here  presupposes  no 
abstract  sundering  of  the  Intellect  from  the  Will,  but 
that  it  shows  the  actual  unity  of  theoretical  and  prac- 
tical processes,  and  is  as  valid  for  the  consciousness  of 
a  wanderer  struggling  to  reach  a  mountain  top,  or  to 
find  his  way  home,  as  it  is  for  the  conscious  life  of  a 
mathematician  seeking  to  solve  an  equation,  of  a  chemist 
waiting  for  the  results  of  the  experiment  which  he  all 


THE  UNITY  OF  BEING  151 

the  while  controls,  of  a  soldier  in  battle,  of  a  lover  com- 
posing his  woful  sonnet,  of  a  statesman  planning  his 
nation's  destiny,  of  an  anchorite  in  the  desert  waiting 
patiently  for  God.  The  endless  varieties  of  the  finite 
situation  depend  partly  upon  the  immediate  contents 
presented;  partly  upon  the  particular  contrast  between 
current  data  and  current  ideas;  partly  upon  the  degree 
to  which  fulfilment,  never  here  consciously  attained,  is 
approximated  at  any  instant ;  and  finally,  upon  the  direc- 
tion in  which  the  special  search  is  tending.  Browning's 
lover,  in  the  Laat  Ride  Together,  when  he  has  his  uni- 
versal vision  of  finitude,  sees,  in  essence,  precisely  the 
situation  that  we  have  been  defining,  precisely  this 
aspect  of  all  our  present  form  of  conscious  life  when 
he  says: — 

"  Fail  I  alone,  in  words  and  deeds  ? 

Why,  all  men  strive,  and  who  succeeds? 

We  rode ;  it  seemed  my  spirit  flew, 

Saw  other  regions,  cities  new, 

As  the  world  rushed  by  on  either  side. 

I  thought,  —  All  labor,  yet  no  less 

Bear  up  beneath  their  unsuccess. 

Look  at  the  end  of  work,  contrast 

The  petty  done,  the  undone  vast, 

This  present  of  theirs  with  the  hopeful  past ; 

I  hoped  she  would  love  me ;  here  we  ride. 

"  What  hand  and  brain  went  ever  paired  ? 
What  heart  alike  conceived  and  dared  ? 
What  act  proved  all  its  thought  had  been? 
What  will  but  felt  the  fleshly  screen  ? 
We  ride,  and  I  see  her  bosom  heave. 
There's  many  a  crown  for  who  can  reach, 
Ten  lines,  a  statesman's  life  in  each  ! 
The  flag  stuck  on  a  heap  of  bones, 


152     THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

A  soldier's  doing  !     What  atones  ? 

They  scratch  his  name  on  the  Abbey-stones. 

My  riding  is  better  by  their  leave." 

As  statesman,  soldier,  poet,  sculptor,  musician  thus  in 
succession  pass  before  the  lover's  contemplation,  he  sees 
the  common  problem  of  their  labors,  whether  their  task 
be  heroic  or  studious;  and  he  sees  this  problem  as  iden- 
tical with  his  own.  It  is  the  absolutely  universal  prob- 
lem of  being  consciously  finite.  And  the  lover  states 
the  case  with  an  almost  technical  exactness,  when  he 
asks:  "What  act  proved  all  its  thought  had  been?" 
"What  will  but  felt  the  fleshly  screen?" 

Thoughts,  ideas,  inner  contents  as  far  as  they  come 
with  a  presented  meaning,  are,  as  you  know  from  modern 
psychology,  already  nascent  deeds.  To  conceive  clearly, 
is  to  construct  an  object  that  is  already,  at  the  instant  of 
its  construction,  more  or  less  fully  present  to  your  inner 
observation  as  an  embodiment  of  your  meaning.  But 
this  embodiment  is  so  far  partial.  Hence  what  we  call 
outer  acts,  deeds  that  involve  what  the  outer  eyes  can 
see,  and  what,  as  you  accomplish  such  deeds,  warms 
your  muscles  with  the  immediate  glow  of  partially  suc- 
cessful effort,  —  such  outer  deeds  are,  for  your  con- 
sciousness, at  the  instant,  only  more  vivid  thoughts, 
more  brilliantly  clear  ideal  expressions  of  your  longing, 
so  that  in  them,  as  they  arise,  you  find  what  you  also 
comprehend,  as  well  as  win  what  you  seek.  Herein 
lies  the  true  unity  of  our  thinking  and  our  willing. 
That  all  our  thoughts  are  not  at  once  thus  presented 
to  our  consciousness  with  the  vividness  of  our  external 
deeds,  this  defect  is  due  in  part  to  the  triviality  of  our 


THE   UNITY  OF  BEING  153 

present  materials  for  action,  which  often  decline  to  fur- 
nish to  us  any  data  whatever  that  are  at  once  vivid 
with  the  clearness  of  our  sense  perceptions,  and  ade- 
quate to  our  inner  aim.  But  the  same  frequent  divorce 
of  inner  aim  and  observable  outward  expression  is  also 
in  part  due  to  the  confusedness  of  our  inward  purposes 
themselves,  or  to  the  fragmentariness  with  which  we  hold 
to  these  purposes,  —  in  brief,  to  our  powerlessness  to 
retain  before  us  the  inner  vision  itself.  And  conse- 
quently we  are  accustomed  to  regard  thought  which 
conceives,  and  will  which  executes,  as  two  sundered 
functions  of  our  conscious  life;  because  sometimes  we 
have  relatively  clear  masses  of  ideas,  to  which  we  still 
cannot  give  the  vivid  clothing  of  outer  sense,  and  some- 
times the  defect  seems  to  be  that  while  outer  sense  is 
plastic,  ideas  are  halting,  and  we  know  not  what  to  un- 
dertake. Yet  all  such  diversity  is  so  far  only  one  of 
the  aspects.  All  our  thinking  is  itself  a  process  of  will- 
ing; all  our  conscious  deeds  are  merely  immediately 
visible  and  tangible  ideas.  And  the  truer  contrast  be- 
tween the  idea  and  its  Other  is  the  one  upon  which 
Browning's  lover  has  fixed  his  attention.  This  contrast 
is  between  the  inadequacy  of  all  the  expressions,  whether 
inner  or  outer,  which  we  just  now  find  ourselves  able  to 
give  to  our  finite  purposes,  —  between  this  inadequacy 
of  expression,  and  just  these  purposes  themselves.  The 
act  never  proves,  for  us,  all  that  its  thought  had  been. 
And  by  the  "  fleshly  screen "  that  hinders  the  will,  our 
lover  in  the  poem  means  the  same  that  we  here  more 
technically  mean  by  whatever  proves  to  be  uncontrollable 
about  the  immediacy  of  our  present  conscious  life. 


154     THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

IV 

This  universal,  this  actually  commonplace  character  of 
our  human  form  of  consciousness,  first  appears,  if  you 
will,  as  just  an  arbitrary  fact  of  life.  But  it  gives  rise, 
we  have  said,  to  the  whole  problem  of  Being,  as  we  men 
face  that  problem,  and  to  the  various  definitions  of  the 
ontological  predicate.  What  for  us  is  real,  is  viewed  as 
an  Other  that,  if  in  its  wholeness  completely  present, 
would  consciously  end  at  least  so  much  of  the  finite 
search  as  could  by  any  possibility  be  ended.  It  is  true 
that,  in  ordinary  life,  we  learn  to  make  a  very  sharp 
distinction  between  the  wished  for  and  the  real.  And 
this  distinction  is,  indeed,  in  the  world  of  common  sense, 
a  very  unconquerable  one.  It  is  also  true,  that  realism, 
in  its  abstract  sundering  of  facts  from  desire,  would  seem 
often  to  have  abandoned  entirely  any  effort  to  win  for 
our  consciousness  any  final  satisfaction  in  the  presence 
of  reality.  But  it  is  also  true  that  such  separation  of 
what  is  real  from  what  is  desirable,  is  a  secondary  result, 
in  the  consciousness  of  every  one  of  us.  Primarily,  in 
seeking  Being,  we  seek  what  is  to  end  our  disquietude. 
But  secondarily  we  do,  indeed,  usually  learn  by  experi- 
ence that,  since  not  all  finite  desires  can  be  satisfied, 
more  is  won,  for  our  finite  striving,  by  making  the  desire 
to  know  what  we  ordinarily  call  facts  a  primal  motive 
in  the  more  rational  life  of  common  sense ;  while  our 
desire  merely  to  gratify  this  or  that  momentary  impulse 
becomes  a  secondary  matter,  which  we  learn  to  oppose 
to  the  general  desire  to  know.  In  time  we  thus  come  to 
hold,  in  the  world  of  finite  common  sense,  that  much  is 


THE  UNITY  OF  BEING  155 

real  and  inevitable,  that  thwarts  our  desires.  Yet  it  still 
remains  true  that  what  we  usually  call  reason,  namely, 
the  search  for  the  truth  as  such,  gets  placed  at  the  head, 
in  our  wiser  daily  life,  and  gets  even  opposed  to  the 
search  for  ordinary  satisfaction,  just  because  there  is,  in 
the  long  run,  more  true  satisfaction  in  being  rational, 
i.e.,  in  our  recognition  of  the  facts  of  common  sense,  than 
there  is  in  striving  irrationally.  And  the  real,  although 
common  sense  thus  often  opposes  it  to  the  merely  desira- 
ble, remains  to  the  end  that  which,  if  present,  would,  as 
we  say,  satisfy  reason,  and  thereby  give  us  the  greatest  v 
fulfilment  possible  to  our  type  of  consciousness. 

We  need  not  wonder,  then,  to  find  a  view  like  Mysti- 
cism breaking  altogether  with  ordinary  thought,  passing 
as  it  were  to  the  limit,  cutting  the  knot  of  the  ultimate 
problems,  casting  down  the  usual  distinctions,  and  insist- 
ing that  the  primal  purpose  of  all  our  finite  striving  can 
be  accomplished  in  presence  of  a  form  of  Being  which 
is  at  once  the  Real  and  the  Good;  the  final  Fact  and 
the  absolute  Perfection.  For  the  mystic,  the  common 
sense  antitheses  on  the  one  hand,  between  the  immedi- 
ate and  the  ideal,  and  on  the  other  hand,  between  the 
real  and  the  desirable,  are  deliberately  and  consciously 
rejected,  as  something  to  be  overcome.  One  overcomes 
them  not,  indeed,  through  an  indulging  of  our  fickle, 
momentary  impulses,  but  through  a  transformation  of  v 
these  impulses.  One  wins  the  truth  not  through  a  culti- 
vation of  what  we  ordinarily  call  Reason,  but  through 
a  quenching  of  Reason  in  the  very  presence  of  the  abso- 
lute goal  of  all  finite  thought.  And,  finally,  peace  is  • 
attained  not  through  a  lapse  into  the  ordinary,  but 


156     THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

always  imperfect  immediacy  of  the  brute  data  of  sense, 
but  through  a  finding  of  a  final  and  ideally  perfect 
Immediate  Fact. 

Historically,  as  I  have  said,  Mysticism  first  appears 
in  India.  Its  early  history  is  recorded  in  the  Upani- 
shads.  But  this  early  history  contains  already  essen- 
tially the  whole  story  of  the  Mystic  faith.  These  half 
philosophical,  half  dogmatic  treatises,  compounded  in  a 
singular  fashion  of  folk-lore,  of  legend,  of  edifying 
homily,  and  of  reflective  speculation,  have  for  a  num- 
ber of  years  been  best  known  to  English  readers  through 
Professor  Max  Miiller's  Sacred  Books  of  the  East. 
They  have  lately  been  made  more  accessible  than  be- 
fore, to  the  philosophical  student,  by  the  translations 
and  comments  of  Professor  Deussen,  of  Kiel,  himself  a 
learned  representative  of  a  modern  philosophical  Mysti- 
cism of  the  Schopenhauerian  type.  I  venture  upon  no 
independent  opinion  as  to  the  composition  and  chro- 
nology of  these  early  Hindoo  works.  I  take  as  simply 
as  possible  what  upon  their  face  they  seem  to  contain. 
I  read  as  well  as  I  can  Deussen's  systematic  interpreta- 
tion of  their  general  sense ;  and  then,  as  I  try  to  restate 
this  sense  in  my  own  way,  I  find,  amidst  all  the  numer- 
ous doctrinal  varieties  of  these  various  Hindoo  Scriptures, 
this  main  thought  concerning  the  ultimate  definition  of 
Being. 

V 

What  is,  is  at  all  events  somehow  One.  This  thought 
came  early  to  the  Hindoo  religious  mind.  For  the  sake 
of  its  illustration  and  defence,  the  thinkers  of  the 
Upanishads  seize,  at  first,  upon  every  legend,  upon 


THE  UNITY  OF  BEING  15V 

every  popular  interpretation  of  nature,  which  may  serve 
to  make  the  sense  of  this  unity  living  in  the  reader's 
or  hearer's  mind.  For  the  writers  of  the  greater  Upani- 
shads,  this  unity  of  Being  is  not  so  much  a  matter  of 
argument  as  it  is  an  object  of  intuition.  You  first 
look  out  upon  the  whole  circle  of  the  heavens,  and 
upon  the  multitudes  of  living  forms,  and  you  say  of 
the  whole:  It  is  One,  because  at  first  you  merely  feel 
this  to  be  true.  Especially  is  the  life  of  the  body,  or 
the  life  of  any  animate  creature,  felt  to  be  one.  But 
the  Hindoo  is  animistic.  His  world  is  all  alive.  Hence 
he  easily  feels  all  this  life  to  be  one. 

But,  as  we  saw  at  the  last  time,  a  metaphysical 
realist  also  can  attempt,  however  inconsistently,  to  call 
all  Being  One.  In  this  case  there  would  result  such 
a  doctrine  as  that  of  the  Eleatic  school.  But  to  what 
obvious  objection  any  Eleatic  doctrine  is  open,  we  also 
saw.  For  if  the  Real  is  the  Independent  Being,  exist- 
ent wholly  apart  from  your  ideas  about  it,  there  is  no 
way  of  escape  from  the  assertion  that  our  false  opinions 
are  themselves  real  in  the  same  sense  in  which  the  One 
is  real.  The  realist  is  essentially  a  dualist.  The  Hin- 
doo was  early  aware  of  this  danger  threatening  every 
monistic  interpretation  of  the  Real.  He  undertook  to 
escape  the  danger  by  a  device  which  in  the  Upanishads 
appears  so  constantly,  and  with  such  directness  of  ex- 
pression, as  to  constitute  a  sort  of  axiom,  to  which  the 
thinker  constantly  appeals.  The  Hindoo  seer  of  the 
period  of  the  Upanishads  is  keenly  and  reflectively  self- 
conscious.  His  own  thinking  process  is  constantly  be- 
fore him.  He  cannot  view  any  reality  as  merely 


158     THE  FOUR   HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

independent  of  the  idea  that  knows  it,  because  he  has 
a  strong  sense  that  he  himself  is  feeling,  beholding, 
thinking,  this  reality,  which  he  therefore  views  as  an 
object  meant  by  himself,  and  so  as  having  no  meaning 
apart  from  his  point  of  view.  The  axiom  which  our 
European  idealists  often  state  in  the  form:  No  object 
without  a  subject,  is  therefore  always,  in  one  shape  or 
another,  upon  the  Hindoo's  lips.  He  states  it  less  tech- 
nically, but  he  holds  it  all  the  more  intuitively.  The 
world  is  One  —  why?  Because  I  feel  it  as  one.  What 
then  is  its  oneness  ?  My  own  oneness  ?  And  who  am  I  ? 
I  am  Brahman  ;  I  myself,  in  my  inmost  heart,  in  my 
Soul,  am  the  world-principle,  the  All.  In  this  form 
the  Hindoo's  Monism  becomes  at  once  a  subjective 
Idealism ;  and  this  subjective  Idealism  often  appears 
almost  in  the  epistemological  form  in  which  that  doc- 
trine has  so  often  been  discussed,  of  late,  amongst  our- 
selves. But  the  further  process  of  the  Hindoo's  monistic 
philosophy  leads  beyond  this  mere  beginning,  and  results 
in  an  elaborate  series  of  reflections  upon  the  mystery  of 
the  Self.  The  final  product  of  these  reflections  trans- 
forms the  merely  epistemological  Idealism,  which,  if 
abstractly  stated,  has  with  us  often  led  to  a  rather 
trivial  scepticism,  into  something  very  different  from 
mere  scepticism,  namely  into  a  doctrine  not  merely 
epistemological,  but  metaphysical.  Let  us  follow  a  few 
steps  of  the  process.1 

"  1.   Verily  the  universe  is  Brahm.     Let  him  whose  soul 
is  at  peace,  worship  it,  as  that  which  he  would  fain  know. 

1  The  following  passage,  from  the  Chandogya  Upanishad,  III,  14, 
has  been  translated  for  me  by  my  colleague,  Professor  C.  R.  Lanman. 


THE   UNITY  OF   BEING  159 

"  Of  knowledge,  verily,  is  man  constituted.  As  is  his 
knowledge  in  this  world,  so,  when  he  hath  gone  hence, 
doth  he  become.  After  knowledge  then  let  him  strive. 

"  2.  Whose  substance  is  spirit,  whose  body  is  life,  whose 
form  is  light,  whose  purpose  is  truth,  whose  essence  is 
infinity,  —  the  all-working,  all-wishing,  all-smelling,  all- 
tasting  one,  that  embraceth  the  universe,  that  is  silent, 
untroubled,  — 

"  3.  That  is  my  spirit  within  my  heart,  smaller  than 
a  grain  of  rice  or  a  barley-corn,  or  a  grain  of  mustard- 
seed;  smaller  than  a  grain  of  millet,  or  even  than  a 
husked  grain  of  millet. 

"This  my  spirit  within  my  heart  is  greater  than  the 
earth,  greater  than  the  sky,  greater  than  the  heavens, 
greater  than  all  the  worlds. 

"4.  The  all-working,  all-wishing,  all-smelling,  all-tast- 
ing one,  that  embraceth  the  universe,  that  is  silent,  un- 
troubled, —  that  is  my  spirit  within  my  heart ;  that  is 
Brahm.  Thereunto,  when  I  go  hence,  shall  I  attain. 
Who  knoweth  this,  he  in  sooth  hath  no  more  doubts. 

"  Thus  spake  Shandilya  —  spake  Shandilya." 

In  such  passages,  which  are  very  frequent  in  the 
Upanishads,  an  immediate  sense  of  the  unity  of  all 
things  runs  parallel  with  an  equally  strong  sense  that 
this  unity  is  wholly  in  myself  who  know  the  truth, — 
in  my  heart,  just  because  what  for  me  is,  is  precisely 
what  I  know. 

The  famous  and  often  quoted  instruction  given  to  the 
young  disciple,  called  Shvetaketu,  by  his  father  Uddalaka, 
deserves  closer  analysis  in  this  connection.  This  instruc- 
tion begins  with  a  statement  of  the  general  monistic 


160     THE   FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

view  of  Being,  uses  arguments  at  first  partly  identical 
with  those  of  the  Eleatic  school,  illustrates  unity  by 
various  observations  of  nature ;  but  then,  in  the  very 
midst  of  what  at  first  seems  a  merely  realistic  doctrine, 
suddenly,  and  with  a  dramatic  swiftness  of  transforma- 
tion, identifies  the  world  principle  with  the  inmost  soul 
of  the  disciple  himself,  and  with  him,  in  so  far  as  he  is 
the  knower  of  the  Unity. 

The  beginning  of  the  argument,  I  repeat,  appears,  from 
one  side,  realistic.  The  world,  says  Uddalaka,  is,  and 
is  one.  The  disciple  is  to  note  this  fact  and  to  bring 
it  home  to  himself  by  frequent  empirical  illustrations 
taken  from  outer  nature.  Then  he  is  to  observe  that 
he,  too,  in  so  far  as  he  is  at  all  real,  is  for  this  very 
reason  one  with  the  world  principle.  The  teaching 
seems  at  this  state  still  a  realism,  only  now  a  realism 
that  has  become  reflective,  recognizing  the  observer  of 
the  reality  as  also  a  real  being,  and  therefore  asserting 
of  him,  as  knower,  whatever  one  also  asserts  of  the 
Being  that  he  knows.  But  suddenly,  even  as  one  speaks, 
one  becomes  aware  that,  through  this  very  identification 
of  the  essence  of  the  knower  and  of  the  object  known, 
the  inmost  reality  of  the  world  has  itself  become  trans- 
formed. It  is  no  longer  a  world  independent  of  knowl- 
edge. One  never  really  has  observed  it  as  an  external 
world  at  all.  It  has  110  independent  Being.  It  is  a 
world  identical  with  the  knower.  It  is  a  vision  of  his 
soul.  Its  life  is  his  life.  It  is  in  so  far  as  he  creates 
it.  Whatever  he  is  as  knower,  that  is  his  world.1 

1 1  quote  again  from  the  Chandogya  VI,  2-15,  and  again  owe  the  trans- 
lation to  Professor  Lanmaii. 


THE   UNITY  OF  BEING  161 

"Being  only,  O  gentle  youth,"  says  Uddalaka  to  his 
son,  "was  this  [universe]  in  the  beginning,  one  only, 
without  a  second. 

"  Now  some  indeed  say,  '  Non-being  only  was  this  [uni- 
verse] in  the  beginning,  one  only,  without  a  second.  From 
this  non-being,  Being  was  born.' 

"But  how,  O  gentle  youth,  might  it  be  so? — thus 
spake  [his  father].  How  from  non-being  might  Being  be 
born? 

"Rather,  Being  only,  O  gentle  youth,  was  this  [uni- 
verse] in  the  beginning,  one  only,  without  a  second." 

And  this  One  Being,  so  Uddalaka  hereupon  continues, 
somehow  mysteriously  resolved  to  become  many.  And 
immediately  there  follows  in  the  text  at  some  length,  a 
cosmology,  in  which  the  various  principles  appear  in  an 
order  obviously  determined  by  tradition.  This  tradition, 
however,  at  first  seems  upon  its  face  thoroughly  real- 
istic. But  erelong  this  mere  cosmology  gives  place  to 
deeper  inquiries.  It  is  one  thing  to  teach  the  tradition 
about  how,  in  Nature,  the  Many  came  from  the  One.  It 
is  another  thing  to  ask  how  the  Many,  now  that  they 
appear,  are  related  to  the  One.  As  Uddalaka  dwells 
upon  this  mysterious  relation,  he  soon  is  led  to  explain 
that  the  Many  are  essentially  illusory,  and  that  not  the 
false  consciousness  which  seems  to  display  to  us  their 
diversity,  but  rather  even  the  unconsciousness  of  deep 
sleep  itself  must  express  the  true  relation  of  the  false 
finite  to  the  true  absolute. 

"As,  O  gentle  youth,  the  honey-makers,  when  they 
make  honey,  gather  the  juices  of  manifold  trees,  and  bring 
the  [resulting]  juice  to  unity  [one-ness,  ekartdrri}, — 


102     THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

"As  those  [juices]  therein  [in  that  unity]  retain  no 
distinction  [so  that  one  could  say],  '  I  am  the  juice  of 
such-and-such  a  tree'  [and  another],  'I  am  the  juice  of 
such-and-such  a  tree,'  — 

"Just  so,  O  gentle  youth,  have  all  these  creatures, 
when  [in  sleep]  they  merge  in  the  [one]  Being,  no  con- 
sciousness that  they  are  merged  in  the  [one]  Being ; 

"They,  whatsoever  in  the  world  they  be,  be  it  tiger 
or  lion  or  wolf  or  boar  or  worm  or  moth  or  gadfly  or 
midge,  —  that  [on  emerging]  become  they  once  more." 

So  far  you  see,  the  result  is  still  like  the  Eleatic  doc- 
trine. In  vain  does  any  mere  cosmology  endeavor  to 
explain  how  the  Many  came  out  of  the  One.  As  a  fact, 
Uddalaka,  in  his  cosmological  speculations,  has  by  this 
time  exhausted  the  motives  of  the  traditional  lore. 
Through  the  experiences  of  a  long  fast,  the  disciple  has 
been  taught  to  observe  how  the  psychical  principle  can 
be  made  to  fade  away,  like  a  dying  coal,  until  only  a 
spark  remains,  and  how,  when  food  is  again  taken,  the 
psychical  principle  flames  once  more  like  the  spark  that 
finds  fuel.  What  is  thus  hinted  is  that  the  psychical 
principle  is  the  one  central  coal  of  the  world-fire.  In 
a  similar  spirit  the  sequence  of  the  physiological  process 
has  been  discussed;  the  relations  of  body  and  soul  to 
the  universal  world  life  have  been  illustrated,  the  mean- 
ing of  growth  and  decay  in  nature  has  been  brought  into 
relation  to  the  doctrine  of  the  absolute  One ;  but  still 
the  theory  has  not  made  clear  in  what  sense  the  One 
can  have  decreed  to  itself:  "I  will  be  Many." 

What  way  remains  ?  Does  it  not  become  plain  that 
the  many  must  be  indeed  altogether  illusory?  And 


THE   UNITY  OF  BEING  163 

that  is  why  one  has  now  turned  to  the  figure  of  the 
honey  and  the  plant  juices,  and  to  the  reflection  that  in 
sleep  all  the  fierce  hostilities  of  the  jungle  lapse,  and  the 
countless  living  beings  are  as  one,  even  while  their  life- 
principle  survives  in  all  its  central  might.  It  is  the 
process  of  the  many  that  is  then  the  falsity.  The  One 
really  never  resolved  to  be  many  at  all.  How  could  it 
thus  resolve?  In  truth,  the  illusory  universe  sleeps  in 
one  central  soul. 

An  Eleatic  doctrine  would  at  this  point  remain  fast 
bound,  dimly  suggesting  perhaps,  as  Parmenides  did, 
that  Being  and  Thought  are  somehow  one,  but  not 
making  anything  definite  of  the  suggestion,  and  mean- 
ing it,  as  no  doubt  Parmenides  also  did,  in  the  purely 
realistic  sense,  as  an  assertion  that  thought  knows  Be- 
ing, even  while  Being  is  independent  of  thought.  But 
the  Hindoo  goes  further.  He,  at  just  this  stage,  turns 
from  the  world  directly  to  the  disciple  himself.  This 
mystery,  he  says,  this  oneness  of  all  Being,  in  this  you 
too  at  all  events  share.  In  whatever  sense  the  world  is 
real,  you  are  real.  Is  the  world  but  One  Being,  then 
you,  so  far  as  you  are  real,  are  identical  with  that 
One. 

Still  the  assertion,  if  understood  in  a  realistic  sense, 
appears  only  to  make  the  self  of  the  disciple  one  of  the 
many  juices  that  are  really  lost  in  the  honey,  one  of 
the  countless  living  creatures  that  roam  the  jungle  in 
illusory  mutual  hatred,  and  that  enter  again  into  the 
truth  only  when  they  sleep.  And  still  the  mystery  of 
the  nature  of  the  One  Being  has  not  been  lighted  up. 
But  Uddalaka  means  his  teaching  to  be  taken,  from  this 


164     THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

point  on,  in  quite  another  sense.  The  variety  is  illu- 
sory. But  whose  illusion  is  it?  The  One  Being  exists. 
But  how?  As  known  Being,  and  also  as  One  with  the 
Knower.  The  very  reflection  that  knowledge  is  real, — 
that  reflection  which  Realism  finds  it  so  hard  and  so 
fatal  to  make,  is  now  to  furnish  the  solving  word.  The 
reality  cannot  be  independent.  Its  life  is  the  Knower's 
life  and  his  alone.  Its  multiplicity  is  his  illusion,  and  his 
only.  The  disciple  has  been  taught  by  nature  symbols. 
They  were,  in  a  way,  to  mediate  the  higher  insight.  But 
still  their  interpretation  was  itself  intuitive  and  in  so 
far  unmediated,  just  because  only  unmediated  intuition 
was  from  the  outset  really  present.  There  was  and  is 
only  the  Knower.  The  disciple  was  the  Knower.  It 
was  he  who  blindly  resolved,  "Let  me  become  many." 
He  shall  now,  in  a  final  intuition,  grasp  the  immediate 
fact  that  he  is,  and  eternally  was,  but  One.  The  para- 
ble of  the  honey  and  the  juices  is  at  once  to  be  inter- 
preted in  this  form.  Another  parable  may  assist:  — 

"  These  rivers,  O  gentle  youth,  flow  eastward  towards 
the  sunrise,  and  westward  towards  the  sunset.  From  ocean 
to  ocean  they  flow,  and  become  (again)  mere  ocean. 

"  And  as  they  there  know  not  that  they  are  this  or 
that  river,  so  verily,  O  gentle  youth,  all  these  creatures 
know  not  when  they  issue  from  the  One  Being,  that 
they  issue  from  the  One. 

"  What  that  hidden  thing  is,  of  whose  essence  is  all  the 
world,  that  is  the  Reality,  that  is  the  Soul,  that  art 
thou,  O  Shvetaketu."  And  now  the  nature  allegories  re- 
cur. But  henceforth  they  have  quite  a  new  sense:  — 

"'Bring  me  a  fruit  from  that  Nyagrodha  tree.'     'Here 


THE  UNITY  OF  BEING  165 

it  is,  venerable  Sir.'  '  Cut  it  open.'  '  It  is  cut  open,  ven- 
erable Sir.'  '  What  seest  thou  in  it? '  '  Very  small  seeds, 
venerable  Sir.'  '  Cut  open  one  of  them.'  *  It  is  cut  open, 
venerable  Sir.'  '  What  seest  thou  in  it  ? '  '  Nothing,  ven- 
erable Sir.' 

"  Then  spake  he :  '  That  hidden  thing,  which  thou  seest 
not,  O  gentle  youth,  from  that  hidden  thing  verily  has 
this  mighty  Nyagrodha  tree  grown.' 

"  Believe,  O  gentle  youth,  what  that  hidden  thing  is,  of 
whose  essence  is  all  the  world,  —  that  is  the  Reality, 
that  is  the  Soul,  that  art  thou,  O  Shvetaketu. 

"  About  a  dying  man  sit  his  relatives,  and  ask :  '  Dost 
thou  know  me?  Dost  thou  know  me?'  So  long  as  his 
speech  does  not  merge  in  his  mind,  his  mind  in  his 
life,  his  life  in  that  central  glimmer,  and  this  in  the 
highest  divinity,  so  long  he  knows  them. 

"But  when  this  has  taken  place,  then  he  knows 
them  no  more. 

"What  this  fine  thing  is,  of  whose  essence  is  all  the 
world,  that  is  the  Reality,  that  is  the  Soul,  that  art 
thou,  O  Shvetaketu." 

VI 

Our  own  difficulties  in  comprehending  such  passages 
as  this  teaching  of  Shvetaketu  come  from  a  failure  to 
see  easily  at  what  point  and  why  the  allegorical  and 
essentially  exoteric  cosmology  passes  over  into  that  sub- 
jective idealism  upon  which  the  whole  doctrine  finally 
depends.  Clearer  becomes  the  nature  of  this  doctrine 
when  we  compare  such  a  scripture  as  the  teaching 
of  Shvetaketu  with  those  passages,  elsewhere  in  the 


166     THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

Upanishads,  in  which  the  teacher  starts  with  an  explicit 
idealism.  In  such  passages  the  topic  of  inquiry  is  di- 
rectly the  problem :  What  is  the  Self  ?  It  is  here  assumed 
that  the  Self  is  the  universe.  But  even  here  the  Self 
appears  in  a  twofold  way.  It  is  first  one's  life  prin- 
ciple, typified  by  the  breath,  by  the  desire,  or  by  the 
mere  physical  sense  of  being,  which  any  one  feels  within 
him  at  any  moment.  As  thus  typified  the  Self  or  At- 
man  seems  finite,  changes,  grows  old,  longs,  is  disap- 
pointed, dies,  transmigrates,  is  subject  to  fate.  On  the 
other  hand,  the  Self  is  the  Knower.  As  such  it  is  the 
topic  of  an  ingenious  reflective  process,  which  these 
Hindoo  thinkers  pursue  through  an  endless  dialectic, 
recorded  in  legendary  dialogues  and  discourses  of  seers 
with  learners.  The  purpose  of  the  dialectic  is  always 
to  make  naught  of  every  dualistic  account,  either  of 
the  relation  between  the  Self  and  the  universe,  or  of  the 
inner  structure  and  meaning  of  the  Self.  All  the  finite 
process  of  thinking  and  of  desiring  is  now  to  be  treated 
as  a  process  of  seeking  the  Self.  Could  the  true  Self 
be  found,  it  would  be  found  as  the  fulfilment  of  desire, 
as  the  perfection,  as  the  finality,  and  as  nothing  but 
this.  The  contrast  between  the  real  and  the  desirable 
is  itself  a  dualism.  It  must  be  cast  off,  together  with 
the  false  realism  that  regards  any  truth  as  independently 
real.  The  finite  world  is  simply  the  process  of  striving 
after  self-knowledge.  And  in  this  process  the  seeker 
pursues  only  himself.  But  if  he  found  himself,  if  all 
desires  were  fulfilled,  if  knowledge  were  complete  — 
what  would  remain  ?  Or  rather,  since  this  use  of  if  and 
of  would  is  itself  a  mere  expression  of  finite  illusion, 


THE   UNITY  OF   BEING  167 

since  in  very  truth  there  is  only  the  Self,  since  the 
finite  process  of  striving  after  the  Self  is  wholly  illu- 
sory, and  the  Self  in  its  perfection  is  alone  real,  what 
now  remains  as  the  Absolute?  Well,  in  the  first  place 
the  true  Self  does  not  strive.  It  has  no  idea  of  any 
other.  It  has  no  positive  will.  Object  and  Subject  are 
in  it  no  longer  even  different.  It  has  no  character. 
There  is  the  murderer  no  longer  murderer,  nor  the  slave 
a  slave,  nor  the  traitor  a  traitor.  Differences  are  illu- 
sory. The  Self  merely  is.  But  now  is  in  what  sense  ? 
Not  as  the  independent  Other,  not  as  the  object  of  a 
thought,  not  as  describable  in  terms  of  an  idea,  not  as 
expressible  in  any  way,  and  still  less  as  mere  nothing. 
For  it  is  the  All,  the  only  Being.  There  remains  to 
hint  what  the  being  of  the  Self  is  only  what  we  now 
call  the  immediacy  of  present  experience.  Only  hence- 
forth we  must  regard  the  absolute  immediacy  not  as 
the  raw  material  of  meaning,  but  as  the  restful  goal  of 
all  meaning, — as  beyond  ideas,  even  because  it  is  sim- 
pler than  they  are.  It  is  at  once  nothing  independent  of 
knowledge  and  nothing  that  admits  of  diversity  within 
knowledge.  The  Self  is  precisely  the  very  Knower,  not 
as  a  thing  that  first  is  real  and  then  knows,  but  as  the 
ver}^  act  of  seeing,  hearing,  thinking,  in  so  far  as  the 
mediating  presence  of  some  Other,  of  some  object  that 
is  known,  seen,  heard,  thought,  is  simply  removed,  and 
in  so  far  as  the  very  diversity  of  the  acts  of  knowing, 
seeing,  hearing,  thinking,  is  also  removed. 

Most  obvious  about  the  Self,  from  our  finite  point  of 
view,  is  its  perfection  as  a  fulfilment  of  our  striving. 
For  us  to  win  oneness  with  the  Self  means  to  attain  a 


168     THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

state  of  perfect  finality,  simplicity,  peace.  Upon  this 
fulfilment  of  desire  the  Upanishads  constantly  insist. 
We  therefore  have  to  express  the  nature  of  the  Self 
in  terms  of  feeling,  of  states  of  mind.  And  the  Hindoo 
expressly  declines  to  go  outside  of  the  knowing  Subject 
for  the  definition  of  the  Reality.  That  art  thou,  is  the 
whole  story.  But  within  the  mind  what  comes  nearest 
to  simplicity  and  peace?  Plainly,  the  most  satisfying 
and  ineffable  experience,  just  in  so  far  as  it  involves  no 
diversity,  and  sends  us  in  no  wise  abroad  either  for  other 
experience,  or  for  any  ideal  characterization  of  the  what 
of  this  experience  itself.  The  Self  then  is  some  final 
and  wholly  immediate  fact  within  the  very  circle  of  what 
we  now  call  consciousness,  but  apart  from  the  restless- 
ness from  which  consciousness  suffers. 

VII 

But  now  comes  indeed  the  hardest  problem  of  Mysti- 
cism. Absolute  Immediacy,  perfect  peace,  fulfilment  of 
meaning  by  a  simple  and  final  presence,  —  when  do  we 
finite  beings  come  nearest  to  that?  On  the  borderlands 
of  unconsciousness,  when  we  are  closest  to  dreamless 
slumber."  The  Absolute,  then,  although  the  Knower, 
must  be  in  truth  Unconscious.  Into  Being  all  the  fierce 
creatures,  all  the  swarms  of  the  jungle,  enter,  as  we 
have  seen,  when  they  sleep.  The  dreamless  sleeper  is, 
for  the  Upanishads,  the  frequent  type  of  the  soul  gone 
home  to  peace.  It  is  so  too  with  the  dead,  so  far  as 
they  are  really  dead,  although  not  so  far  as  they  return 
from  death,  to  the  bad  dream  of  finite  life,  through  the 
wretched  fate  of  transmigration.  But  if  this  is  so, 


THE  UNITY  OF   BEING  169 

wherein  does  the  Absolute  Being  differ  from  pure  Noth- 
ing? 

The  seers  of  the  Upanishads  are  fully  alive  to  this 
problem.  It  is  a  mistake  to  imagine  that  they  ignore 
it.  More  than  once  they  discuss  it  with  the  keenest 
dialectic.  In  one  legend  Indra,  the  god,  learns  from 
Prajapati,  the  highest  god,  the  lore  about  the  true  Self, 
in  the  form  of  a  series  of  parables.  He  first  learns  that 
the  Self  is  not  the  material  self,  the  mere  "  Me "  (as 
some  of  our  modern  psychologists  would  call  it),  but 
that  the  Self  is  rather  the  Knower.  A  man  dreaming 
is  therefore  a  better  type  of  the  true  Self,  since  the 
dream  is  the  dreamer's  own  creation.  But  even  the 
subjective  idealism  of  the  dreamer's  world  is  an  insuf- 
ficient illustration  of  the  truth,  since  to  the  dreamer 
it  still  is  as  if  facts  beyond  himself  were  real.  But 
the  true  Self  does  not  dream.  He  knows  the  truth. 
And  that  truth  is  only  himself.  Of  what  beyond  him 
should  he  therefore  dream?  That  is  what  Aristotle 
himself  says  of  God.  But  for  the  Hindoo  this  means 
that  the  dreamless  sleeper  must  be  a  still  better  type 
of  the  Self.  But,  as  Indra  hereupon  objects  to  this 
teacher:  Has  not  the  dreamless  sleeper  gone  to  mere 
nothingness?  Is  he  real  at  all? 

In  a  similar  fashion,  in  another  legend,  the  sage  Yaj- 
navalkya  teaches  his  wife  Maitreyi,  first  that  nothing 
in  the  universe  is  real  or  is  desirable  except  the  Abso- 
lute Self.  But  then  the  Self,  he  goes  on  to  say,  is 
in  its  immortality  unconscious.  For  all  consciousness 
involves  partially  dissatisfied  ideas  of  a  Beyond,  and 
includes  desires  that  seek  another  than  what  is  now 


170     THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

wholly  present.  But  in  the  true  Self  all  is  attained, 
and  therefore  all  is  One;  there  is  no  Beyond,  there  is 
no  Other.  There  are  then,  in  the  true  Self,  no  ideas, 
no  desires,  just  because  he  is  the  final  attainment  of 
all  that  ideas  and  desires  seek. 

Yet  Maitreyi  objects.  "  The  doctrine  confuses  me," 
she  says.  How,  in  fact,  should  the  immortal  One  be 
unconscious?  Yajnavalkya,  in  reply,  can  only  give,  as 
reductio  ad  absurdum  of  every  objection,  the  argument 
that  all  dualism,  involving  the  reality  of  objects  out- 
side the  Knower,  is  illusory,  while  all  consciousness  im- 
plies just  such  dualism. 

Absolute  Immediacy  is  to  be  something  better,  you 
see,  than  the  only  partially  immediate  sensations  which, 
in  our  present  finite  state,  merely  serve  to  set  us  think- 
ing. It  is  also  to  be  above  ideas,  —  as  the  peace  that 
passeth  understanding.  But  all  our  relative  immediacy 
actually  does  set  us  thinking.  All  our  relative  satis- 
factions take  the  form  of  finite  ideas.  The  Absolute 
must  then  be  ineffable,  indescribable,  and  yet  not  out- 
side of  the  circle  within  which  we  at  present  are  con- 
scious. It  is  no  other  than  we  are ;  consciousness 
contains  it  just  in  so  far  as  consciousness  is  a  knowing. 
Yet,  when  we  speak  of  the  Absolute,  all  our  words 
must  be :  "  Neti,  Neti,"  "  It  is  not  thus ;  it  is  not  thus." 
So  the  sage  Yajnavalkya  himself,  more  than  once  in 
these  legends,  teaches:  To  us,  it  is  as  if  the  Absolute, 
in  its  immediacy,  were  identical  with  Nothing.  But 
once  more :  —  Is  the  Absolute  verily  a  mere  nothing  ? 

The  Hindoo's  answer  to  this  last  question  is  in  one 
sense  precise  enough.  The  Absolute  is  the  very  Oppo- 


THE  UNITY  OF   BEING  171 

site  of  a  mere  Nothing.  For  it  is  fulfilment,  attain- 
ment, peace,  the  goal  of  life,  the  object  of  desire,  the 
end  of  knowledge.  Why  then  does  it  stubbornly  ap- 
pear as  indistinguishable  from  mere  nothing?  The 
answer  is:  That  is  a  part  of  our  very  illusion  itself. 
The  light  above  the  light  is,  to  our  deluded  vision, 
darkness.  It  is  our  finite  realm  that  is  the  falsity,  the 
mere  nothing.  The  Absolute  is  All  Truth. 

One  sees,  at  last  then,  this  mystic  Absolute  gets,  for 
the  Hindoo,  its  very  perfection  from  a  Contrast-Effect. 
Here  is  the  really  solving  word  as  to  the  whole  matter. 
It  is  by  contrast  with  our  finite  seeking  that  the  goal 
which  quenches  desires  and  ideas  at  once  appears  as 
all  truth  and  all  life.  But  to  attribute  to  the  goal  a 
concrete  life  and  a  definite  ideal  content  would  be,  for 
this  view,  to  ruin  this  very  contrast.  For  concreteness 
means  variety  and  finitude,  and  consequently  ignorance 
and  imperfection.  The  Absolute  home  appears  empty, 
just  because,  wherever  definite  content  is  to  be  found, 
the  Hindoo  feels  not  at  home,  but  finite,  striving,  and 
deluded  into  a  search  for  something  beyond. 

Yet  just  this  very  contrast-effect,  whereby  what  is 
defined  as  having  no  definite  characters,  is  even  thereby 
conceived  as  the  most  perfect,  —  we  all  know  this  same 
feature  well  in  our  own  religious  literature.  The  medi- 
aeval poem  of  Bernard  of  Cluny  concerning  the  Golden 
Jerusalem,  —  the  poem  called  De  Contemptu  Mundi, — 
what  is  it,  apart  from  its  sensuous,  and  so  far  con- 
sciously false  imagery,  but  a  crowding  of  antitheses  and 
of  negations,  to  the  end  that  by  merely  denying  our 
illusions,  and  forsaking  our  world,  we  may  contemplate 


172     THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

an  ineffable  glory  whose  true  names  are  all  only  negative. 
Addressing  the  Eternal,  the  poet  says :  — 

"  Tu  sine  littore. 
Tu  sine  tempore." 

Shoreless  and  timeless  is  the  depth  of  true  Being.  Con- 
trasting the  present  life  with  the  perfect  life,  one  has 
the  wholly  negative  antithesis:  — 

"  Hie  breve  vivitur 
Hie  breve  plangitur 

Hie  breve  fletur ; 
Non  breve  vivere 
Non  breve  plangere 

Retribuetur." 

To  be  sure,  Bernard's  hymn  is  a  very  treasure-house  of 
brilliant  sensuous  characterizations  of  the  joys  of  the 
home  of  peace ;  but  just  these  characterizations,  as  we 
but  now  observed,  are  metaphorical,  and  are  as  such  in- 
tended to  be  false.  They  hint  at  some  final  immediacy ; 
and  this  justifies  their  use  of  sensuous  language.  They 
mean  the  ineffable,  but  their  intended  truth  lies,  above 
all,  in  the  antitheses  and  in  the  negations  that  they 
merely  illustrate  :  — 

"  Nescio,  nescio 
Quae  jubilatio 
Lux  tibi  qualis." 

The  Nescio,  nescio  of  Bernard,  is  identical  in  meaning 
with  the  Neti,  Neti ;  it  is  not  so ;  it  is  not  so,  of  the  sage 
Yajnavalkya.  In  the  very  contrast  of  the  finite  with  the 
ineffable  this  mysticism  lives,  whether  it  be  Hindoo  or 
Christian  Mysticism :  — 


THE  UNITY  OF  BEING  173 

"  Urbs  Sion  unica 
Mansio  mystica 
Condita  Caelo,  — 
Nunc  tibi  gaudeo 
Nunc  mihi  lugeo 
Tristor,  anhelo." 

And  in  view  of  this  fact,  that  these  infinite  contrasts  are 
the  only  expressible  aspect  of  the  whole  situation,  the 
Hindoo  metaphor  of  the  dreamless  sleeper  is,  indeed,  as 
apt  to  suggest  the  perfect  glory  of  the  home  of  peace, 
as  are  many  of  the  metaphors  of  Bernard;  as  are,  for 
instance,  the  joys  and  delights,  the  sweet  sounds  and  the 
gay  colors,  with  which  his  vision  falsely  fills  the  depths, 
where,  truly,  as  the  poet  himself  believes,  eye  hath  not 
seen  and  ear  hath  not  heard. 

But  if  you  ask  why  the  Hindoo  philosophical  mystics 
feel  so  sure  that,  despite  this  wholly  negative  expression 
of  the  nature  of  their  Absolute,  they  are  still  teaching  a 
truth  that  is  not  only  indubitable,  but  positively  signifi- 
cant and  even  portentous,  then  the  answer  for  them 
always  lies  in  the  reductio  ad  absurdum  of  opposing 
efforts  either  to  win  final  truth  or  to  satisfy  the  practical 
needs  of  life.  For  our  conscious  finitude,  they  insist, 
means  at  once  dissatisfaction,  and  the  admission  that  the 
truth  is  not  present  to  us.  Common-sense  Realism,  ob- 
serving this  very  fact,  makes  the  truth  an  independent 
Being,  that  is  beyond  our  striving,  in  the  sense  of  being 
wholly  apart  from  every  knowledge  which  refers  to  it. 
But,  in  reply,  the  Hindoo  in  his  own  way  observes,  and 
insists  upon,  that  essentially  contradictory  character  of 
all  ordinary  Realism,  —  that  very  character  which  we  at 
the  last  time  set  forth,  in  our  own  way,  in  detail.  What 


174     THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEIXG 

the  Hindoo  finds,  then,  positively  sure,  is  that  Nothing  can 
be  real  that  is  independent  of  the  Knower.  Here  is  in- 
deed the  centre,  the  moving  principle,  of  this  entire  dia- 
lectical process  which  the  sages  of  the  Upanishads 
remorselessly  pursue.  The  only  alternative  to  their  own 
view  of  Being  that  is  known  to  them  is  simply  Realism. 
But  simple  Realism  they  see  to  be  self-contradictory,  and 
so  absurd.  The  truth  cannot  then  be  independent  of  the 
Knower.  But  if  not  independent  of  the  Knower,  and 
yet  if  not  given  to  him  by  his  finite  experience  and 
thought,  what  can  the  truth  be  except  what  one  ap- 
proaches, within  one's  own  very  heart,  when  one  grad- 
ually casts  off  finitude,  and  wins  unity  and  peace. 

The  process  of  accomplishing  this  end  proves  to  con- 
sist of  a  series  of  stages  whose  terms  lose  finite  defini- 
tion and  expressible  qualities  the  farther  you  proceed  in 
the  series.  The  limit  of  this  series  of  stages  of  purifica- 
tion and  of  simplification  of  life  appears  to  the  restless 
finite  creature  as  zero.  But,  as  the  Hindoo  now  with 
assurance  insists,  this  zero  must  be  also  the  Absolute,  the 
One  sole  Being,  and  must  be  so  precisely  because,  even 
as  the  limit  of  the  series,  it  is  also  the  goal  of  the 
process,  the  wished  for  home  of  the  soul,  the  expected 
object  of  perfect  knowledge, — in  brief,  the  Attainment. 
Now  this  contrast-effect,  and  this  alone,  gives  the  zero, 
that  is  the  limit  of  the  finite  process,  its  value,  its  truth, 
its  absoluteness.  And  if  you  waver  at  the  gate  of  this 
heaven,  half  minded  to  turn  back  to  error  and  to  trans- 
migration, wondering  whether  there  be  any  true  glory 
within,  the  Hindoo,  reminding  you  of  the  hopelessness 
of  every  realistic  definition  of  truth,  and  of  the  failure 


THE   UNITY  OF  BEING  175 

of  every  finite  effort  to  express  the  reality,  can  now  only 
ask  you:  For  what  else  but  this  Absolute  within  the 
gate,  within  the  knowing  heart,  smaller  than  the  mustard 
seed,  yet  vaster  than  the  heavens, —  for  what  else  can 
you  seek?  He  simply  defies  you  to  find  other  defini- 
tion of  Being  than  this.  And  herewith  you  have  his 
whole  case  presented. 

VIII 

I  have  dwelt  so  long  upon  the  Upanishads,  because, 
as  I  have  said,  they  contain  already  the  entire  story  of 
the  mystic  faith,  so  far  as  it  had  a  philosophical  basis. 
The  rest  of  its  stoiy  is  not  any  part  of  philosophy.  End- 
lessly repeated  in  history,  perhaps  often  independently 
rediscovered  elsewhere,  the  dialectic  of  Mysticism  has 
nowhere  any  essentially  different  tale  to  tell,  nor  any 
other  outcome  to  record.  How  in  Europe  Plotinus  com- 
bined the  mystical  theory  of  the  One  with  realistic,  and 
in  some  respects  with  still  deeper  and  often  more  con- 
structively idealistic,  conceptions  of  the  constitution  of 
the  world  from  the  Nous  downward;  how  the  Christian 
faith  took  to  its  heart  the  stranger  doctrine  whose  origi- 
nal home  was  in  India,  until  the  faith  of  the  Middle 
Ages  became  half  a  Mysticism ;  how  the  heretics  used 
the  mysterious  light  of  the  same  teaching  to  guide  them 
into  forbidden  paths ;  how  the  devotional  books  and  the 
poets  have  taught  to  the  laity  many  of  the  formulas 
that  one  first  finds  in  the  Upanishads  —  all  this  I  have 
already  very  vaguely  sketched  in  a  former  lecture.  But 
to  narrate  the  tale  of  the  mere  historical  fortunes  of 
Mysticism  would  require  volumes,  but  would  introduce 


176     THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

no  novelties  except  those  involved  in  the  profoundly  in- 
teresting personal  temperaments  of  individual  mystics. 

Our  concern  lies  here  in  observing  that  the  philo- 
sophical Mystic,  whatever  his  personal  type,  and  what- 
ever his  nation  or  tongue,  always  uses  the  same  general 
metaphysical  and  dialectical  devices.  His  theoretical 
weapon  is  some  reduetio  ad  absurdum  of  Realism.  His 
polemic  is  against  the  sharp  outlines  of  the  world  of 
Independent  Beings,  against  the  fallacies  of  all  finite  ideas, 
and  against  the  possibility  of  worldly  satisfaction.  With 
the  author  of  the  Imitation  of  Christ,  he  reminds  you 
that  if  you  could  see  all  created  things  together,  it 
would  be  but  a  vain  show,  and  hence  he  bids  you  for- 
sake every  creature.  With  Spinoza,  he  tells  you  that 
only  in  the  Eternal  is  there  joy  alone,  and  that  all  else, 
being  but  imagination,  perishes.  With  Eckhart  he  ex- 
plains that  the  very  creed  of  the  Church,  as  ordinarily 
understood,  is  but  allegory,  and  that  even  the  Trinity 
is  only,  as  it  were,  a  superficial  emanation  from  the 
Godhead,  while  the  true  Godhead,  the  Deitas,  never 
"looked  upon  deed,"  never  dreamed  of  diversity,  but  is 
a  "simple  stillness"  that  you  can  find  within  your 
heart  whenever  you  have  won  the  ultimate  virtue,  and 
have  forsaken  all  things  for  the  wilderness  of  Being. 

In  general,  the  mystic  knows  only  Internal  Meanings, 
precisely  as  the  realist  considers  only  External  Mean- 
ings. But  the  mystic,  nevertheless,  condemns  all  finite 
ideas,  just  because  they  have  no  absolute  internal  mean- 
ing. He  bids  you  look  within;  but  he  desires  first 
wholly  to  transform  your  inner  nature.  He  compares 
your  heart  to  the  Bethlehem,  where  God  may  at  any 


THE  UNITY  OF  BEING  177 

instant  be  born.  Nor  in  all  this  is  the  mystic,  if  he  be 
a  thinker,  devoid  of  reasons.  His  thought  is  eager  to 
dwell :  — 

"  On  doubts  that  drive  the  coward  back, 
And  keen  through  wordy  snares  to  track 
Suggestion  to  her  inmost  cell." 

His  doubts  are  exposures  of  the  fallacies  of  all  ordinary 
opinion.  He  thinks,  to  the  very  end  that  he  may  de- 
stroy the  vanity  of  mere  thinking.  An  Eckhart  is 
amongst  the  most  learned  of  trained  scholastic  dis- 
putants. A  Spinoza  is  the  most  merciless  foe  of  the 
illusions  of  common  sense.  With  ideas  the  mystic  wars 
against  all  mere  ideas.  With  the  abstract  weapons  of 
Realism  he  refutes  Realism.  At  last  he  believes  him- 
self to  have  won  the  right,  by  virtue  of  the  very 
breadth  of  his  vision  of  finitude,  to  condemn,  like 
Browning's  lover  in  the  Last  Ride  Together,  the  whole 
of  finitude. 

Nor,  after  all,  is  the  mystic's  result  so  unlike,  in  its 
logic,  the  result  reached  by  Browning's  lover  himself. 
I  have  said,  more  than  once,  that  the  essence  of  Mys- 
ticism lies  not  in  the  definition  of  the  subject  to 
which  you  attribute  Being,  but  in  the  predicate  Being 
itself.  This  predicate  in  case  of  Mysticism  is  such  that, 
as  soon  as  you  apply  it,  the  subject  indeed  loses  all 
finite  outlines,  lapses  into  pure  immediacy,  quenches 
thought,  becomes  ineffable,  satisfies  even  by  turning  into 
what  ordinary  Realism  would  call  a  mere  naught. 
Now  you  may  call  this  subject  by  any  name  you  please: 
The  Self  of  our  Hindoo,  or  the  Holy  Grail,  or  Spinoza's 
f 


178     THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

Eternal,  or  Eckhart's  Stille  Wiiste,  or  the  One  of 
Plotinus,  or  the  "  jEonian  music "  of  Tennyson's 
famous  vision  in  the  In  Memoriam,  or  the  unspeak- 
able happiness  which  Browning's  lover  has  vainly 
mourned.  In  any  case,  both  your  process  and  your  re- 
sult, if  you  are  a  Mystic,  will  be  the  same.  First  you 
look  for  the  object  in  a  realistic  world.  It  is  so  far  an 
Independent  Being.  In  theory  you  define  it.  In  life 
you  try  to  win  it.  Then  you  become  reflective.  You 
observe  that  such  a  Being,  just  in  so  far  as  it  is  inde- 
pendent, is  unknowable,  inaccessible,  indefinable,  in  fact, 
self-contradictory.  You  observe  then  that  your  Realistic 
definition  was  false.  Moreover,  you  also  see  that  the 
whole  meaning  of  the  search  lies  within  yourself;  that 
your  theory  of  Being  never  had  any  but  a  practical 
sense;  that  the  whole  question  is  one  of  the  search  for 
a  certain  limiting  state  of  your  finite  variable,  for  a  state 
called  Attainment.  And  hereupon  you  are  prepared  to 
come  on  that  which  is  and  to  catch  "the  deep  pulsations 
of  the  world."  Your  ideas,  keenly  observing  all  the 
paradoxes  and  failures  of  finitude,  finally,  through  their 
dialectic,  destroy  one  another  and  themselves  as  well. 
And  the  goal  of  the  process  is  at  least  momentarily 
reached  when  you  come  to  the  conclusion  of  Browning's 
lover.  For  he,  after  his  vision  of  the  vanity  of  all  finite 
striving,  abandons  at  last  the  hope  for  the  so-called  lady, 
the  Independent  Being  who  rides  so  proudly  beside  him 
in  the  illusory  world  of  ordinary  life,  —  abandons  that 
hope,  only  to  take  refuge  in  the  ineffable  immediacy  of 
an  experience  that  he  takes  for  the  instant  to  be  the 
ultimate  reality. 


THE   UNITY  OF  BEING  179 

"  And  yet,  she  has  not  spoke  so  long  ! 
What  if  heaven  be  that,  fair  and  strong 
At  life's  best,  with  our  eyes  upturned 
Whither  life's  flower  is  first  discerned, 
We  fixed  so,  ever  should  so  abide  ? 
What  if  we  still  ride  on,  we  two, 
With  life  forever  old  yet  new, 
Changed  not  in  kind  but  in  degree, 
The  instant  made  eternity, 
And  heaven  just  prove  that  I  and  she 
Ride,  ride  together,  forever  ride." 

The  language  is  here  not  that  of  the  mediaeval  or  of 
the  Hindoo  mystics.  But  the  ontology  is  in  essence 
one  with  theirs. 

In  fine,  mysticism  is,  as  a  conception  of  Being,  the 
logically  precise  and  symmetrical  correspondent  of  real- 
ism. In  its  innermost  conceptual  constitution  it  is  the 
mirror  picture,  so  to  speak,  of  its  opponent.  Each  doc- 
trine seeks  an  Absolute  finality,  —  a  limit  which  is  con- 
ceived solely  by  virtue  of  its  contrast  with  the  process 
whereby  our  ideas  tend  towards  that  limit.  Realism  seeks 
this  limiting  object,  this  true  Being,  as  somewhat  Inde- 
pendent of  Ideas.  Mysticism,  declaring  that  independent 
Being  is  self -contradictory  and  so  impossible,  seeks  Being 
within  the  very  life  of  the  knowing  process.  Each  doc- 
trine is  a  conscious  abstraction.  Neither  can  tell  what 
it  means  by  its  goal.  Each  is  sure  that  its  goal  is. 
Practically,  the  two  doctrines  are  related  as  are  positive 
and  negative  quantities  in  mathematics.  "Submit  to  the 
facts,1"  says  Realism.  "  TJiey  are  without.  You  can  do 
nothing  to  make  them  different  by  merely  knowing  them." 
" Know"  says  Mysticism.  "  The  truth  is  nigh  thee,  even 


180     THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

in  thy  heart.  Purify  thyself.  In  thee  is  all  truth.  How 
shall  it  be  except  as  known  and  as  one  with  the  Knower  f  " 

Yet  each  doctrine,  pursued  to  the  end,  culminates  in  a 
passive  abandonment  of  all  our  actual  finite  ideas  about 
Being  as  vain.  Realism  is  often  unwilling  to  observe 
that,  if  it  is  true,  ideas  are  also  Beings ;  Mysticism  un- 
dertakes explicitly  to  deny  that  ordinary  ideas  are  at  all 
real.  But  both  end  in  a  reductio  ad  absurdum  of  every 
definite  finite  idea  of  the  Real. 

In  their  logical  outcome  these  two  theories,  polar  oppo- 
sites  of  each  other  as  they  are,  must,  nevertheless,  in 
consequence  of  this  parallelism  of  their  structures,  pre- 
cisely agree.  Each  in  the  end  defines  Nothing  what- 
ever. Only  the  realist  does  not  intend  this  result,  while 
the  mystic  often  seems  to  glory  in  it.  He  thus  glories, 
as  we  have  seen,  because  in  fact  he  is  defining  a  very 
fascinating  and  a  highly  conscious  contrast-effect,  —  a 
contrast-effect  that,  far  from  being  itself  anything  abso- 
lute, or  actually  unknown  and  ineffable,  is  a  constantly 
present  character  of  our  human  type  of  finite  conscious- 
ness.  As  a  fact,  our  thinking  is  a  search  for  a  goal  that 
is  conceived  at  once  as  rationally  satisfying  and  as  theo- 
retically true.  And  this  goal  we  conceive  as  real  pre- 
cisely in  so  far  as  we  consciously  pursue  it,  and  mean 
something  by  the  pursuit.  But  now  this  goal,  since  it 
is  not  yet  present  to  us,  in  our  finite  form  of  conscious- 
ness, is  first  conceived  by  contrast  with  the  process  of 
the  pursuit.  So  far  indeed  we  conceive  it  negatively. 
In  this  sense  we  can  say  of  the  goal,  Nescio,  Nescio,  or 
Neti,  Neti,  just  as  Bernard  of  Cluny,  or  as  the  Hindoo 
sages,  said.  But  the  meaning  of  these  very  negatives 


THE   UNITY  OF  BEING  181 

lies  in  the  positive  contrast-effect  that  they  even  now 
actually  present  to  us.  Finite  as  we  are,  lost  though  we 
seem  to  be  in  the  woods,  or  in  the  "wide  air's  wilder- 
nesses," in  this  world  of  time  and  of  chance,  we  have 
still,  like  the  strayed  animals  or  like  the  migrating  birds, 
our  homing  instinct.  It  is  this  homing  instinct  that  we 
for  the  first  merely  articulate  when  we  talk  of  true  Being. 
Being  means  something  for  us,  however,  because  of  the 
positive  presence,  in  finite  consciousness,  of  this  inner 
meaning  of  even  our  poorest  ideas.  We  seek.  That  is 
a  fact.  We  seek  a  city  still  out  of  sight.  In  the  con- 
trast with  this  goal,  we  live.  But  if  this  be  so,  then 
already  we  actually  possess  something  of  Being  even  in 
our  finite  seeking.  For  the  readiness  to  seek  is  already 
something  of  an  attainment,  even  if  a  poor  one.  But 
when  the  Mystic,  defining  his  goal  wholly  in  negative 
terms,  lays  stress  upon  the  contrast  as  simply  absolute, 
he  finds  that  so  far  his  Absolute  is  defined  as  nothing 
but  the  absence  of  finitude,  and  so  as  apparently  equiva-  ta- 
lent to  nothing  at  all,  since  all  definite  contents  are  for 
us  so  far  finite,  and  since  the  absence  of  finitude  is  for 
us  the  absence  of  contents.  If  hereupon  the  mystic 
skilfully  points  out  that  this  apparent  zero  is  still,  by 
virtue  of  the  contrast,  defined  as  our  goal,  as  our  com- 
ing attainment,  as  our  peace,  our  hope,  our  heaven,  our 
God,  —  then  one  rightly  replies  to  the  mystic  that  what 
makes  his  Absolute  appear  thus  glorious  is  precisely  its 
presented  contrast  with  our  imperfection.  But  a  zero 
that  is  contrasted  with  nothing  at  all,  has  so  far  not 
even  any  contrasting  character,  and  remains  thus  a  genu- 
ine and  absolute  nothing.  Hence,  if  the  Absolute  of  the 


182     THE   FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

Mystic  is  really  different  from  nothing,  it  is  so  by  virtue 
of  the  fact  that  it  stands  in  real  contrast  with  our  own 
real  but  imperfect  Being.  We  too  then  are.  If  our 
life  behind  the  veil  is,  as  the  mystic  says,  our  goal,  if 
already,  even  as  we  are,  we  are  one  with  the  Knower, 
then  the  absolute  meaning  does  not  ignore,  but  so  far 
recognizes  as  real,  even  by  virtue  of  the  contrast,  our 
present  imperfect  meaning. 

It  follows  that  if  Mysticism  is  to  escape  from  its  own 
finitude,  and  really  is  to  mean  by  its  absolute  Being 
anything  but  a  Mere  Nothing,  its  account  of  Being  must 
be  so  amended  as  to  involve  the  assertion  that  our  finite 
life  is  not  mere  illusion,  that  our  ideas  are  not  merely 
false,  and  that  we  are  already,  even  as  finite,  in  touch 
with  Reality. 


LECTUEE  V 


LECTURE   V 

THE  OUTCOME  OF  MYSTICISM,  AND  THE  WOKLD  OF  MODERN 
CRITICAL  RATIONALISM 

MYSTICISM,  which  our  last  lecture  discussed,  has  one 
great  advantage  over  Realism.  The  realist,  namely,  gives 
you  a  conception  of  Being  which  pretends  to  be  au- 
thoritative; but  this  authority  appears,  like  the  realistic 
type  of  Being  itself,  something  merely  external  and 
therefore  opaque.  The  realist  demands,  as  a  matter  of 
common  sense,  that  you  first  accept  as  real  his  Inde- 
pendent Beings.  Hence,  if  you  are  to  comprehend  the 
realist's  position,  you  must  make  your  own  reflections; 
you  must  do  your  own  critical  thinking.  Realism  is 
essentially  dogmatic,  and  gives  you  no  aid  in  your  at- 
tempt to  sound  the  inner  meaning  of  the  realistic  doc- 
trine. But  Mysticism,  on  the  contrary,  is  from  the 
outset  in  a  way  reflective ;  it  is  founded  upon  an  ex- 
plicit appeal  to  your  own  experience.  It  points  out  to 
you  first  that  if  any  object  is  real  for  you,  it  is  you 
alone  who  can  find,  within  yourself,  the  determining 
motive  that  leads  you  to  call  this  object  real.  Hence 
Mysticism  depends  upon  making  you  considerate  of  these, 
your  metaphysical  motives,  aware  of  your  meaning.  You 
ascribe  to  this  or  that  object  reality.  Mysticism  is  a 
practical  doctrine.  It  observes  at  once  that  you  merely 
express  your  own  need  as  knower  when  you  thus  regard 
the  object  as  existent.  Mysticism  asks  you  hereupon 

185 


186     THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

to  define  your  needs  in  an  absolutely  general  way.  What 
do  you  want  when  you  want  Being?  Mysticism  replies 
to  this  question,  as  the  sage  Yajnavalkya  replies,  in  the 
Upanishads,  to  the  questions  of  his  wife  Maitreyi: 
You  want  yourself,  —  the  Self  in  its  completeness,  in 
its  fulfilment,  in  its  final  expression.  In  brief,  when  you 
talk  of  reality,  you  talk  of  self-possession,  of  perfection, 
and  of  peace.  And  that  is,  therefore,  all  that  you  mean 
by  the  Being  of  the  world  or  of  any  type  of  facts. 
Being  therefore  is  nothing  beyond  yourself.  You  even 
now  hold  it  within  you,  in  your  heart  of  hearts.  Being 
therefore  is  just  the  purely  immediate.  To  be  means  to 
quench  thought  in  the  presence  of  a  final  immediacy 
which  completely  satisfies  all  ideas.  And  by  this  simple 
reflection,  the  mystic  undertakes  to  define  the  Absolute. 


The  advantage  of  this  mystical  method  of  dealing 
with  the  problem  of  Reality  lies  in  the  fact  that  Mys- 
ticism, because  it  is  essentially  a  self-conscious  and  re- 
flective doctrine,  explicitly  states  its  own  defects,  and 
points  beyond  its  own  abstractions.  Realism  actually 
asserts  hopeless  contradiction,  and  then  stubbornly  de- 
clines to  take  note  of  the  fact  that  it  does  so.  But 
philosophical  Mysticism  always  expounds  its  own  para- 
doxes, and  actually  glories  in  them.  The  process  of 
getting  beyond  Realism  therefore  involves  a  hostile  and 
paradoxical  dialectic,  whereby  one  exposes  the  realistic 
paradoxes.  The  realist  himself  takes  as  little  part  in 
this  process  as  possible,  and  opposes  to  his  critics  merely 
the  authority  of  sane  common  sense.  Everybody  knows, 


THE  OUTCOME  OF  MYSTICISM  187 

he  insists,  that  the  world  is  independently  real.  But 
to  ask  what  independent  reality  means  is,  he  remarks, 
mere  morbid  curiosity.  To  doubt  the  independence, 
would  be  to  doubt  the  value  of  sanity.  "When  Bishop 
Berkeley  said  there  was  no  matter,  and  proved  it,  'twas 
no  matter  what  he  said."  Such  is  the  spirit  of  any 
typically  realistic  reply  to  Berkeley.  Hence  to  be 
realistic  is  essentially  to  ignore  every  fundamental  criti- 
cism of  the  ontological  predicate.  Even  Herbart,  that 
most  honest  and  critical  of  realists,  could  see  no  sense 
in  trying  to  get  behind  the  ultimate  fact  of  what  he 
called  the  Absolute  Position  of  the  real  itself.  If  there 
is  show  or  seeming,  said  Herbart,  there  is  what  points 
towards  or  hints  at  the  real.  But  the  real  itself  is  the 
finally  posited,  that  hints  at  nothing  beyond  itself,  and 
that  therefore  is  independent  of  the  show.  That,  for 
such  a  realism,  is  the  whole  story  of  the  ontological 
predicate,  and  to  inquire  further  is  vain.  The  rest,  even 
for  a  man  of  Herbart's  minuteness  and  caution,  consists 
in  inquiring  what  subjects,  what  Wesen,  are  worthy  to 
receive  this  predicate. 

The  only  way  to  deal  with  Realism  is  therefore  to 
insist,  with  equal  obstinacy,  that  a  realist  shall  explain, 
not  what  objects  he  takes  to  be  real,  but  what  he 
means  by  their  independence.  Such  obstinacy  is  hos- 
tile. No  realist  willingly  cooperates  in  the  undertak- 
ing. The  critical  task  is  accordingly  ungracious  and 
abstract.  For  Realism  depends  upon  not  knowing  what 
it  does;  and  to  point  out  to  it  what  it  is  doing  seems 
to  it  and  to  any  mere  bystander  like  a  carping  and 
unkindly  assault. 


188     THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF   BEING 

But  the  mystic,  on  the  contrary,  is  in  a  much  larger 
measure  his  own  critic.  He  is  essentially  dialectical. 
And  his  dialectic  process  is  very  much  that  of  Elaine  in 
the  song  of  Love  and  Death  that  Tennyson  puts  into  her 
mouth.  Like  Elaine,  the  mystic  is  reflecting  upon  the 
final  goal  of  his  life-journey.  That  goal  for  him  is  the 
Reality,  the  Soul,  the  Self.  It  is  as  such  infinitely 
precious  to  him.  But  what  is  this  absolute  goal,  just  in 
so  far  as  it  is  Real  at  all  ?  Is  it  a  live  Being,  or  after 
all  is  it  not  rather  identical  with  mere  Non-Being,  with 
dreamless  sleep,  with  that  "  rapture  of  repose  "  on  the 
face  of  the  dead  that  Byron's  well-known  lines  describe. 
Or,  to  use  Elaine's  speech,  is  it  Love  or  Death  that 
the  mystic  defines  as  his  Absolute  ?  Like  Elaine,  the 
mystic  equally  defines  both  Love  and  Death,  both  the 
Perfect,  and  the  Nothing;  or  if  you  like,  he  leaves  both 
of  them,  and  the  whole  difference  between  them,  con- 
sciously and  deliberately  undefined,  while  his  entire 
doctrine  consists  in  saying,  exactly  as  the  adorable 
Elaine  says,  "I  know  not  which  is  sweeter,  No,  not  I." 
That,  as  we  in  effect  saw  at  the  last  time,  is  the  precise 
technical  sense  of  the 

"Nescio,  nescio 
Quae  jubilatio, 
Lux  tibi  qualis." 

of  Bernard's  hymn  concerning  the  Urbs  Sion  unica, 
mansio  my&tica.  That  is  the  sense  of  Y&jnavalkya's 
Neti,  Neti.  And  Mysticism,  curiously  enough,  has  in- 
spired whole  nations  and  generations  of  mankind  by 
saying  essentially  nothing  whatever  but  what,  in  her 
despair,  Tennyson's  Elaine  so  pathetically  sings. 


THE  OUTCOME  OF  MYSTICISM  189 

Now  so  easy  is  it,  from  a  merely  external  point  of 
view,  to  see  the  formal  defect  of  the  outcome  of  this 
train  of  thinking,  that  the  great  difficulty  in  expound- 
ing the  mystic  position,  is,  not  to  destroy  its  illusions, 
but  rather  first  dramatically  to  create  them  in  the 
hearer's  mind,  to  the  end  that  he  may  at  least  histori- 
cally appreciate  the  meaning  of  the  mystical  definition 
of  Being.  But  remember,  in  any  case,  that  if  it  is  thus 
easy  from  without  to  make  naught  of  the  mystic's  re- 
sult, it  is  also  fair  to  add  that  this  refutation  is  itself 
made  easy  through  the  mystic's  own  explicit  confession. 
His  doctrine  has  the  honesty  of  reflective  thought  about 
it.  He  tells  you  where  his  own  paradoxes  are  to  be 
found.  And  the  value  of  dealing  with  him  lies  not  in 
refuting  him,  for  in  effect  he  already  himself  provides 
the  whole  refutation ;  but  in  comprehending  both  why 
he  has  inspired  mankind,  and  why  he  creates  the  illu- 
sion that  his  empty,  swept,  and  garnished  dwelling  is 
the  very  house  of  God.  And  yet  after  our  foregoing 
account,  it  should  not  now  be  hard  to  see  wherein  the 
illusion  and  the  truth  of  Mysticism  are  to  be  found. 

The  mystic  asserts  that  the  real  cannot  be  wholly 
independent  of  knowledge.  Herein  he  is  right.  He 
asserts  that  the  reality  of  which  you  think  and  speak 
is  first  of  all  a  reality  meant  by  you.  This  is  profoundly 
true.  He  declares  that  within  yourself  lies  the  sole 
motive  that  leads  you  to  distinguish  truth  from  error, 
reality  from  unreality,  the  world  from  the  instant's  pass- 
ing contents.  And  in  all  this  the  mystic,  whether 
Hindoo  or  Christian,  is  a  representative  of  the  simple 
facts  about  Being,  —  facts  which  everybody  concerned 


190     THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

with  the  subject  ought  to  know  merely  as  a  matter  of 
general  education. 

And  the  mystic  further  observes  that,  despite  all  this, 
you  have  not  now  won,  as  finite  thinker,  the  true  pres- 
ence of  the  very  Being  which  you  seek  and  which  you 
still  contain  within  your  very  meaning.  He  points  out 
that,  in  your  present  poor  form  of  self-consciousness, 
just  now,  you  find  within  you  what  you  do  not  wholly 
mean,  and  mean,  as  if  it  were  beyond  you,  a  truth  that, 
although  it  is  nigh  you,  even  in  your  heart,  you  do  not 
at  present  find.  He  insists  that  your  finite  disquietude 
is  due  to  your  restlessness  in  this  essentially  intolerable 
situation.  He  advises  you  that,  in  looking  for  Being, 
you  are  attempting  to  end  this  disquietude.  Now  in  all 
this  the  mystic  is  distinctly  an  empiricist,  a  reporter  of  the 
facts,  as  you  can  at  any  moment  see  them  for  yourself 
if  you  will.  Moreover,  he  is  a  decidedly  practical  thinker. 
But  as  a  religious  teacher  he  is  inspiring,  first  of  all, 
just  because  he  appeals  to  your  own  individuality.  He 

v/breathes  the  common  spirit  of  all  the  higher  religions 
when  he  conceives  your  goal  as  an  inner  salvation,  and 
your  search  for  truth  as  essentially  a  practical  effort  to 
win  personal  perfection.  It  is  no  wonder  then  that  the 

^/mystics  have  been  the  spiritual  counsellors  of  humanity. 
Where  the  realist  falsely  sunders  the  what  and  the  that,  the 
outer  world  and  the  individual  soul,  the  theoretical  and 
the  practical  interests,  the  mystic  sees  the  unity  of  life's 
business,  identifies  the  needful  and  the  true,  unites  the 
moral  Ought  with  the  theoretical  Ideal,  teaches  that 
the  absolutely  Real,  by  virtue  of  its  very  function  as  the 
Real,  must  also  be  the  absolutely  Good,  gives  life  a 


THE  OUTCOME  OF  MYSTICISM  191 

genuine  coherence  of  meaning,  and  defines  the  whole 
duty  of  man  as  simple  fidelity  to  that  meaning.  To  the 
mystics,  then,  has  been  historically  committed  the  feed- 
ing of  the  flock  of  the  faithful,  the  gathering  of  the 
heavenly  manna,  the  saving  of  humanity  from  the  abyss 
into  which  the  mere  respectability  of  dogmatic  Realism, 
if  left  to  itself,  would  have  infallibly  plunged  all  the 
deeper  interests  of  the  Spirit. 

So  much  for  the  obvious  positive  efficacy  of  the  mys- 
tical undertaking.  But  the  undertaking  itself  takes  the 
form,  as  we  said,  of  a  search  for  a  certain  limiting  state 
of  that  finite  variable  which  is  called  your  knowledge, 
or  your  experience,  or  your  insight,  and  for  a  defini- 
tion of  what  happens  when  that  state  is  reached.  The 
mystic  also  attempts  to  define  how  this  state  is  related 
to  consciousness,  and  he  tries  to  treat  this  limiting 
state  very  much  as  (if  he  were  a  mathematician)  he  might 
attempt  to  define,  in  a  purely  quantitative  world,  the 
limit  of  an  infinite  series  of  terms,  and  to  consider  how 
one  series  of  values  can  be  a  function  of  another.  The 
mystic  ignores  the  sum  of  the  series.  He  cares  only  for 
the  final  term  itself,  viewed  as  the  limit  which  the  other 
terms  approach.  And  he  attempts  to  define  this  limit- 
ing state  of  the  finite  variable  by  a  process  which  is,  as 
a  fact,  fallacious.  His  position  is  that  since,  in  us  mor- 
tals, consciousness  means  ignorance,  and  since,  the  less 
we  observe  our  ignorance,  the  nearer  we  are  to  uncon- 
sciousness, therefore,  at  the  limit,  to  be  possessed  of  abso- 
lute knowledge  is  to  be  unconscious. 

If  you  persist  in  asking  how  the  mystic  can  thus  con- 
ceive the  zero  of  consciousness  as  also  the  goal  of  knowl- 


192     THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

edge,  then  he  replies  with  his  endlessly  repeated  reductio 
ad  absurdum.  If,  he  says,  you  stopped  anywhere  short 
of  unconsciousness  in  the  series  of  states  of  finite  con- 
sciousness, you  would  find  yourself  thinking  of  some- 
thing beyond  you,  desiring  another,  less  troubled,  state,  — 
confessing  your  imperfection.  You  would,  therefore,  be 
confessedly  not  in  presence  of  Being.  If  you  are  to  get 
into  the  presence  of  Being,  and  know  what  the  Knower 
finally  knows,  you  must  then  finally  pass  to  the  limit 
itself.1  But  so  to  pass  is  to  leave  no  variety,  no  ex- 
ternal object,  no  passing  moment's  ideas,  no  conscious 
content  in  the  field  of  knowledge.  It  is,  in  short,  to 
leave  nothing  present  but  the  Knower  alone,  and  the 
Knower  as  finally  immediate  datum,  too  completely  im- 
mediate to  be  conscious  at  all. 

If  one  hereupon  replies  that  this  paradox  of  the  mys- 
tic, the  passing  to  the  limit,  and  undertaking  to  define 
it  in  terms  of  the  vanishing  series,  deprives  the  Abso- 
lute of  any  value  as  a  Being,  by  making  the  whole  truth 
a  mere  zero,  then  the  mystic  assures  you  that  just  this 
zero  has  infinite  value,  because  it  is  the  goal  of  the  series 
of  states  of  finite  consciousness.  Do  you  not  want  peace  ? 
he  says.  Can  anything  be  of  more  worth  to  you  than 
attainment?  If  attainment  involves  what  for  finite  con- 
sciousness means  the  quenching  of  desire,  of  thought,  and 
of  consciousness,  does  that  deprive  the  search  for  attain- 
ment of  meaning  ?  For  now  that  you  are  finite,  all  your 
passion  is  for  attainment  and  for  peace. 

1  Nevertheless,  as  one  must  in  any  case  point  out,  even  this  process 
might,  at  the  limit,  prove  discontinuous.  The  Knower  might  possess 
some  new  type  of  consciousness.  As  a  fact,  he  does. 


THE  OUTCOME  OF  MYSTICISM  193 

But  hereby  the  final  sense  of  Mysticism,  and  the  final 
reply  to  the  mystic,  once  more  clearly  enough  comes  to 
sight.  Overlooking  the  merely  formal  defect  of  the  ar- 
gument as  to  the  limiting  state  of  knowledge  one  can 
say :  It  is  true,  in  arithmetic,  that  zero  is  a  very  impor- 
tant member  of  the  number  series.  But  it  gets  its  whole 
importance  by  its  contrasts  and  its  definite  quantitative 
relations  with  the  other  numbers.  Just  so  here,  if  the 
Absolute  is  not  only  zero,  but  also  real,  also  the  goal, 
also  the  valuable,  it  is  so  by  contrast  with  the  finite 
search  for  that  goal.  But  to  suppose,  as  the  mystic 
does,  that  the  finite  search  has  of  itself  no  Being  at  all, 
is  illusory,  is  M&ya,  is  itself  nothing,  this  is  also  to  de- 
prive the  Absolute  of  even  its  poor  value  as  a  con- 
trasting goal.  For  a  nothing  that  is  merely  other  than 
another  nothing,  a  goal  that  is  a  goal  of  no  real  process, 
a  zero  that  merely  differs  from  another  zero,  has  as  little 
value  as  it  has  content,  as  little  Being  as  it  has  finitude. 
What  the  mystic  has  positively  defined,  then,  is  the  law 
that  our  consciousness  of  Being  depends  upon  a  contrast 
whereby  we  set  all  our  finite  experience  over  against  some 
other  that  we  seek  but  do  not  yet  possess.  As  a  fact,  how- 
ever, it  is  not  only  the  goal,  but  the  whole  series  of 
stages  on  the  way  to  this  goal  that  is  the  Reality.  It 
is  the  sum,  then,  or  some  other  function  of  the  terms  of 
the  series,  that  has  Being.  And,  as  a  fact,  Being  must 
be  attributed  to  both  the  principal  members  of  the  rela- 
tion of  contrast,  both  to  the  seeking  and  to  the  attain- 
ment. Else  is  the  attainment  the  fulfilment  of  nothing. 
The  finite  then  also  is,  even  if  imperfect.  Its  imperfec- 
tion is  not  the  same  as  any  mere  failure  to  be  real  in 


194     THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

any  degree.  It  is  real  in  its  own  way,  if  the  Absolute 
is  real.  And  unless  the  imperfect  has  Reality,  the  Abso- 
lute has  none.  We  must  then  abandon  the  mystic's  mere 
series  of  gradually  vanishing  terms  for  some  view  that 
unites  these  terms  into  a  more  connected  whole.  What 
is,  is  not  then  merely  immediate,  is  not  merely  the  limit 
of  the  finite  series,  is  not  merely  the  zero  of  conscious- 
ness. The  result  therefore  is  that  Immediacy  is  but  one 
aspect  of  Being.  We  must  afresh  begin  our  effort  to 
define  the  ontological  predicate,  by  taking  account  both 
of  finite  ideas,  and  of  the  sense  in  which  they  can  be 
true. 

Our  result,  in  case  of  the  mystic,  is  accordingly  very 
simple.  To  the  realist  we  formerly  said :  Your  ideas 
are  Independent  Beings  as  surely  as  their  objects  are 
such.  Hence  your  world  is  rent  in  twain,  and  you  can- 
not put  it  together  again.  To  the  mystic  we  now  say: 
Your  Absolute  is  defined  merely  as  the  goal  of  the 
finite  search.  That  it  is  such  a  goal,  this  alone,  accord- 
ing to  your  own  hypothesis,  distinguishes  it  from  mere 
nothing,  for  to  save  the  unity  of  Being,  you  have  de- 
prived it  of  all  other  characters  than  this.  Therefore, 
since  your  Absolute  is  only  a  goal,  an  attainment,  and 
is  naught  else,  its  sole  meaning  is  due  to  your  process 
of  search,  in  other  words  to  your  restless  ideas  that 
seek  it.  Annihilation  is  something  to  me  only  so  long 
as  I  seek  annihilation.  Death  is  a  positive  ideal  only 
so  long  as  I  strive  for  death.  Pure  immediacy  has  a 
content  only  so  long  as  it  fulfils  ideas.  In  brief,  by 
contrast  with  and  by  other  relation  to  finite  facts,  your 
zero  has  its  meaning.  If,  then,  your  conscious  ideas 


THE  OUTCOME  OF  MYSTICISM  195 

are  naught,  your  Absolute  is  naught  in  precisely  the 
same  sense,  and  in  precisely  the  same  degree  as  the 
ideas  and  as  the  finite  facts  are  naught.  On  the  other 
hand,  if  your  Absolute  is  real,  then,  unless  it  has  a 
distinguishing  positive  content  of  its  own,  unless  it  is 
more  than  mere  finality  and  peace,  the  finite  world  of 
conscious  strivings  after  it,  is  precisely  as  real  as  itself, 
since  your  Absolute  borrows  all  its  Being  from  its 
contrast  with  those  strivings.  Precisely,  then,  as  we 
dealt  with  the  realist  by  pointing  out  that  his  ideas  are 
at  least  as  real  as  their  supposed  independent  objects, 
so  now  we  bring  the  mystic's  case  to  its  close,  by 
pointing  out  that  his  Absolute,  in  its  abstraction,  is 
precisely  as  much,  and  in  exactly  the  same  sense  of  the 
terms  a  Nothing,  as,  by  his  hypothesis,  his  own  con- 
sciousness is. 

And  herewith  we  indeed  abandon  the  abstractions  of 
both  Realism  and  Mysticism.  What  we  have  learned 
from  those  abstractions  is  that  our  finite  consciousness 
indeed  seeks  a  meaning  that  it  does  not  now  find  pre- 
sented. We  have  learned  too  that  this  meaning  is 
neither  a  merely  independent  Being,  nor  a  merely  im- 
mediate Datum.  What  else  can  it  be? 

II 

Our  answer  to  this  question  depends  upon  an  effort 
to  amend  the  extreme  statement  of  Realism.  I  suppose 
that  no  realist,  when  once  confronted  with  the  conse- 
quences of  the  absolute  mutual  independence  of  the 
Real  and  of  the  Idea  that  from  without  refers  to  it, 
will  be  disposed  to  admit  that  he  ever  really  meant 


196     THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

such  total  independence.  The  Real,  he  will  now  admit, 
is  not  logically  or  in  its  true  essence  wholly  indiffer- 
ent to  whether  anybody  knows  it  or  not.  It  is  only 
practically,  or  relatively,  independent.  If  you  still 
speak  of  it  then  as  the  relatively  independent  member 
of  the  relation,  you  must  indeed,  now  and  henceforth, 
say  that  the  Real  is  essentially  such  that,  under  condi- 
tions, it  would  become  knowable  and  known.  This,  the 
essential  preparedness  of  Reality  for  knowledge,  does, 
therefore,  result  from  the  foregoing  criticism  of  Real- 
ism. In  the  light,  then,  of  this  consequence,  we  must 
proceed.  This  essential  relation  of  Reality  to  knowl- 
edge already  constitutes  a  part  or  an  aspect  of  any 
real  Being,  even  before  it  becomes  known.  Even  the 
meteors,  wandering  there  in  interplanetary  space,  un- 
seen, are  already  such  that,  if  they  were  to  become 
incandescent  by  entering  our  atmosphere,  they  would 
become  visible  to  an  eye  that  chanced  to  look  their 
way.  And  knowledge  comes  to  pass  when  things  that 
possess  reality  apart  from  knowledge  come  to  influence, 
as  a  consequence  of  the  general  laws  governing  interac- 
tion, the  conscious  states  of  knowing  Beings.  So  at  least 
a  Realism,  revised  in  the  light  of  the  foregoing,  will  next 
be  led  to  maintain. 

Such  Realism  may  proceed  as  follows :  "  Perception, 
as  a  kind  of  knowledge,  results  when  a  real  object, 
in  accordance  of  course  with  its  previous  nature,  causes 
impressions  in  a  percipient.  But  of  course  no  object 
is  wholly  indifferent  to  the  effects  that  it  causes.  The 
incandescent  meteor  changes  its  physical  and  chemi- 
cal properties,  even  at  the  moment  when  it  becomes 


THE  OUTCOME  OF  MYSTICISM  197 

visible.  And  this  change  is  due  to  the  previous  physi 
cal  and  chemical  constitution  of  the  meteor,  which 
thereby  was  always  prepared,  in  one  way,  to  become 
known  to  a  Being  with  a  power  of  vision.  And  this 
case  is  a  type  of  the  way  in  which  Being  and  Idea 
are  related.  Upon  this  basis  must  our  metaphysic  rest." 

I  thus  merely  indicate  a  general  and  a  well-known 
popular  view  as  to  the  relatively  independent  reality  of 
things  —  a  view  which  usually  passes,  in  the  ordinary 
speech  of  common  sense,  for  Realism ;  although,  histori- 
cally speaking,  the  most  thoroughgoing  realists  have 
avoided  such  concessions  to  popular  opinion,  just  be- 
cause they  really  ruin  the  independence  of  the  Real. 
Neither  the  Sankhya,  nor  Herbart,  regards  the  inde- 
pendent reality  as  in  truth  the  genuinely  physical  cause 
of  knowledge,  and,  as  a  fact,  one  who  offers  such  popu- 
lar compromises,  familiar  though  they  are  to  us  all,  must 
be  prepared  to  go  much  further,  on  the  way  towards 
Idealism,  than  he  at  first  imagines.  Such  a  compromise 
is,  in  fact,  an  entire  surrender  of  the  realistic  thesis. 

I  will  not  pause  to  develope,  at  any  length,  the  various 
well-known  theories  that  have  been  held  by  modified 
Realism  as  to  the  causation  of  perception,  or  as  to  the 
evolution  of  knowledge  and  of  knowing  beings,  or  as  to 
the  rest  of  the  natural  history,  both  of  ideas  and  of  rela- 
tions of  ideas  and  "real  external  things."  We  are  all 
familiar  with  such  views.  They  have  their  important 
place  in  psychology  and  in  cosmology.  But  they  are 
here,  in  their  details,  simply  not  relevant.  Our  only 
interest,  at  present,  in  such  theories,  is  an  interest  in 
seeing  what  manner  of  Reality  can  be  ascribed  to  objects 


198     THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

which  you  call  real  "  apart  from  "  or  "  externally  to  "  or 
"in  relative  independence  of"  the  experience  of  any  par- 
ticular observer,  but  which  you,  meanwhile,  regard  as, 
by  nature,  "sources"  or  "causes"  or  "possible  causes" 
of  knowledge.  When  you  say,  with  such  a  consciously 
modified  Realism,  "The  Real  is  not  ever  wholly  inde- 
pendent of  whether  it  is  known  or  not;  it  is  only  rela- 
tively independent;  and  it  is,  in  nature,  such  as  to  be 
knowable,  or  such  as,  under  conditions,  to  become  a  cause 
or  source  of  knowledge,"  —  when  you  modify  Realism 
in  this  way,  what  is  the  true  consequence  for  your  fun- 
damental Theory  of  Being? 

The  consequence,  I  insist,  is  deeper  than  you  might  at 
first  suppose.  For  it  is  natural  to  imagine  that  you  can 
still  keep  the  convenient  part  of  Realism,  —  the  practi- 
cally unapproachable  indifference,  dignity,  and  compelling 
authority,  of  the  Independent  Beings,  while  sacrificing  so 
much  of  the  abstractions  of  pure  Realism  as  it  proves  to 
be  logically  inconvenient  to  retain.  "  The  world,"  you 
perhaps  now  say,  "is  there,  of  course,  whether  or  no 
this  or  that  man  knows  it.  And  a  man  has  practically 
to  submit  his  knowledge  to  the  Real,  just  as  if  it  were 
wholly  independent  of  him  in  every  way.  Of  course  no 
independence  is  ever  really  absolute.  That  has  to  be 
admitted.  All  things  are  always  interrelated.  But,  prac- 
tically speaking,  the  meteors  are  what  they  are,  whether 
or  no  we  men  see  them.  And  Neptune,  when  discovered, 
was  not  created  by  the  astronomer's  computations  nor  by 
his  telescope  nor  by  his  brain.  Now  this  practical  inde- 
pendence of  any  particular  knowledge  is  what  we  mean 
by  the  Being  of  things.  Before,  after,  and  apart  from 


THE  OUTCOME  OF  MYSTICISM  199 

anybody's  knowledge,  things  remain,  on  the  whole,  what- 
ever they  are.  To  be  and  to  be  known,  to  be  knowable 
and  to  be  actual,  —  these  are  of  course  ultimately  related 
characters  in  any  being.  Yet  they  are  characters  that, 
on  the  whole,  fall  apart,  in  the  nature  of  things  as  they 
are.  Knowledge  is,  therefore,  relatively  speaking,  an  ac- 
cident in  the  world.  And  its  business  is  to  conform  to 
the  facts,  not  to  create  them.  Upon  so  much  we  still 
insist,  despite  the  fate  of  an  extreme  and  abstract,  and 
of  course  in  so  far  absurd,  Realism." 

Yet  one  must  now,  in  reply,  insist  upon  yet  a  fresh 
criticism  of  the  bases  even  of  this  modified  Realism. 
And  the  criticism  first  takes  a  very  simple  form.  It 
asks :  Can  we,  then,  divide  the  Being  of  things  into 
two  parts,  as  the  primary  and  the  secondary  qualities 
of  matter  have  been  divided?  Can  we,  then,  say  of 
one  of  these  parts  of  Reality,  "  That  is  wholly  indepen- 
dent of  knowledge  ;  that  is  entirely  indifferent  to  whether 
anybody  knows  it  or  not?"  And  can  we,  then,  say  of 
the  rest  of  the  Being  of  things  (namely,  let  us  suppose, 
of  the  secondary  qualities  of  matter),  "  That  part  is  not 
indifferent  to  knowledge,  but  alters  according  to  the 
nature  of  the  particular  being  who  happens  to  know  it  ?  " 

The  question  is  momentous  for  the  fate  of  any  mod- 
ified Realism.  It  is  usually  supposed  that  such  a  divi- 
sion is  easily  possible,  even  if  not  verifiable  in  detail. 
What  the  meteor  is,  in  so  far  as  it  either  now  flashes 
or  is  at  least  capable  of  visible  incandescence,  —  that, 
one  may  suppose,  is  an  aspect  or  part  of  the  reality  of 
the  meteor  which  indeed  would  exist  apart  from  this 
or  that  knowledge,  but  which  cannot  be  expressed  ex- 


200     THE   FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

cept  by  taking  account  of  the  actual  or  possible  rela- 
tion to  knowledge.  But  that  the  meteor  is  external 
matter,  and  has  mass,  extension,  or  other  primary  qual- 
ities,—  this  aspect  of  the  meteor  would  remain  real  if 
there  never  were  any  knowledge  in  the  world ;  and  this 
aspect  is  not  altered  in  its  character  by  taking  account 
of  our  ideas  about  it.  Some  such  division  of  the  real 
into  two  parts,  one  closely  and  explicitly  related  to 
knowledge,  and  one  independent  of  knowledge,  is  very 
commonly  attempted.  One  supposes  that  one  is  able 
to  say  what  the  world  would  still  be  if  knowledge  van- 
ished. The  rest  of  the  world,  the  phenomenal  aspect 
of  things,  the  part  of  Being  that  has  explicit  relation 
to  knowledge,  one  supposes  to  be  also  capable  of  defi- 
nition more  or  less  by  itself.  Thus  Being  has  two 
parts,  an  independent  part,  and  a  dependent  part. 

But  our  former  analysis  of  pure  Realism,  by  virtue 
of  the  very  abstractness  and  one-sidedness  that  made 
it  at  the  time  so  austere,  gives  us,  as  it  were,  a 
"razor"  wherewith  to  cut  away  just  the  "indepen- 
dent" part  of  this  now  divided  realistic  universe.  If 
the  Real  were  wholly  independent  of  knowledge,  it 
would  be  self-contradictory.  Well,  just  so,  if  any  part 
/of  the  Reality,  if  any  division  of  it,  if  any  group  of 
substances  or  characters  in  it,  were  real  in  entire  in- 
dependence of  knowledge,  or  were  the  same  whether 
known  by  anybody  or  not,  all  of  our  former  analysis 
would  apply  to  just  that  portion  of  the  real  universe. 
Thus  it  would  be  vain  to  say  that  the  Real  is  inde- 
pendent of  knowledge  when  or  in  so  far  as  it  causes 
no  knowledge  of  itself  to  exist,  or  is  not  a  possible 


THE  OUTCOME  OF  MYSTICISM  201 

cause  of  knowledge ;  and  that  only  when  it  is  an  actual 
or  possible  cause  of  knowledge  it  is  in  essential  relation 
to  the  latter.  Any  such  view  would  be  destroyed  by 
our  former  attack  upon  the  Independent  Beings.  If  no 
Reality  can  have  entirely  independent  Being,  no  part 
of  reality  can  win  such  Being.  And  this  consideration 
ends  at  once  every  effort  to  divide  off  one  section  of 
Being  as  the  independent  part. 

When  we  say,  then,  that  the  real  is  in  any  sense 
practically  or  partially  independent  of  knowledge,  we 
do  not  mean  that  it  has  two  parts,  one  in  essence  in- 
dependent of  whether  it  is  known  or  not,  the  other 
essentially  linked  to  ideas.  No,  the  Real  must  be 
through  and  through,  to  its  very  last  quality,  to  its 
very  inmost  core,  such  as  to  be  fitted  to  be  known.  Its 
nature  is  through  and  through  thus  tainted,  if  you 
please  so  to  say,  by  adaptation  to  ideal  purposes. 

If,  then,  Being  is  to  keep  its  practical  independence 
of  any  particular  knowledge,  our  modified  Realism  must 
indeed  be  not  only  modified,  but  transformed.  Yet  how  ? 

In  answer,  one  has  merely  to  state  afresh  and  more 
carefully  the  situation  now  reached.  The  Real,  for  our 
modified  Realism,  is  to  be  somehow  "outside  of  any 
particular  knowledge."  It  is  to  be  "authoritative"  over 
against  our  "mere  ideas."  They  must  "conform"  to  it. 
On  the  other  hand,  it  is  such  that,  under  conditions, 
they  may  "correspond"  to  it.  If  they  do  so  "corre- 
spond," they  will  be  true.  Independently  of  this  essential 
relation  to  knowledge,  Being  is  indefinable.  It  is  there 
as  that  which,  if  known,  is  found  giving  to  ideas  their 
validity,  as  that  to  which  ideas  ought  to  correspond,  and  as 


202     THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

that  whose  essential  relation  to  ideas  is  that  it  is  their 
model)  and  is  adapted  to  their  nature  as  such  model. 
Now  independently,  I  repeat,  of  this  relation,  the  Real  is 
for  us  henceforth  simply  indefinable.  Nor  can  any  part, 
or  aspect,  or  quality  of  it  be  defined  in  logical  indepen- 
dence of  this  relation. 

But  this  new  type  of  Being  really  involves  a  new 
fundamental  conception  of  what  it  is  to  be  real.  To  be 
real  now  means,  primarily,  to  be  valid,  to  be  true,  to  be 
in  essence  the  standard  for  ideas.  Our  transformed  theory 
is  now  that  our  ideas  have  a  standard  external  to  them- 
selves, to  which  they  must  correspond.  If  we  retain 
Being  in  this  sense,  we  still  view  it  as  Other  than  ideas 
that  relate  to  it,  and  as  outside  of  our  present  knowledge. 
But  we  do  not,  in  this  case,  view  the  real  as  conceiv- 
able, either  in  whole  or  in  part,  in  an  entire  abstraction 
from  knowledge.  It  may  be  somehow  real  when  knowl- 
edge is  not.  That  we  shall  have  to  see.  But  in  essence 
it  is  always  related  to  the  purpose  of  knowledge,  and 
is  altered  when  these  relations  alter. 

And  now  let  us  proceed  to  define  more  specifically 
this  new  conception  of  Being.  Let  us  take  it  first  in 
one  of  its  most  recent  forms. 

Ill 

Is  it  not  indeed  plain  that,  as  we  ourselves  have  often 
heretofore  said,  when  we  talk  of  Being,  we  are  indeed 
seeking  for  what,  if  present,  would  satisfy  or  tend  to 
satisfy  our  conscious  needs  and  meanings?  Let  us  take 
this  very  character  as  the  sole  basis  of  our  definition  of 
what  it  is  to  be.  Let  us  first  say  that  whenever  we  talk 


THE  OUTCOME  OF  MYSTICISM  203 

of  Being  we  mean  a  definitely  Possible  Fact  of  experi- 
ence, viewed  just  as  something  possible  for  us.  Or,  again, 
let  us  say  that  by  Being  in  general  we  mean  precisely 
what  Kant  called  Mogliche  Erfahrung.  For  is  it  not  also 
plain  that  we  are  trying  to  find  out,  in  all  our  search 
for  Being,  precisely  what  experience  we  may  hope  to 
get  under  given  conditions,  and  what  experience  we 
may  not  expect  to  get?  Can  we  not  then  reduce  to 
just  these  terms  the  whole  inquiry  after  Being  in  the 
province  of  common  sense,  in  the  world  of  science,  and 
even  in  the  more  mysterious  realms  of  religion?  If, 
hearing  strange  sounds  in  the  street,  I  look  out  of  the 
window,  am  I  not  trying  to  define  or  to  confirm  some  idea 
of  a  possible  experience?  If  an  astronomer  searches  a 
star-cluster  for  variables,  or  a  stellar  spectrum  for  familiar 
lines,  is  he  not  verifying  assertions  as  to  possible  con- 
tents of  experience  ?  If  the  devout  man  prays,  and 
expects  an  answer,  or  hopes  for  immortality,  is  he  not 
looking  for  possible  empirical  data?  What  is,  is  then 
for  me  what,  under  certain  definable  conditions,  I  should 
experience.  To  be  is  precisely  to  fulfil  or  to  give  war- 
rant to  ideas  by  making  possible  the  experience  that 
the  ideas  define. 

Well,  let  us  next  generalize  this  notion  a  little,  let  us 
state  it  more  impersonally,  and  then  let  us  see  what  we 
get.  I  have  ideas;  present  experience  does  not  present 
to  me  all  that  they  mean.  I  look  to  see  how  they  are 
related  to  Being.  What  then,  apart  from  my  private 
and  momentary  point  of  view,  is  Being  in  general?  Is 
it  not  what  renders  my  ideas  Valid  or  Invalid?  When 
I  say,  There  is  a  real  world,  what  do  I  mean  except  that 


204     THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

some  of  my  ideas  are  already,  and  apart  from  my  pri- 
vate experience,  valid,  true,  well-grounded?  When  the 
mystic  himself  defined  his  Absolute,  what  was  he  defin- 
ing but  the  supposed  possible  goal  of  a  process  of  finite 
purification  of  ideas  and  of  experiences?  When  the 
realist  spoke  of  the  Independent  Beings,  what  did  he 
himself  mean  except  that  certain  of  our  ideas  are  true 
or  false  despite  our  own  desires,  or  even  quite  against 
our  wishes  ?  And  to  set  aside  as  we  have  done  either 
Mysticism  or  Realism,  what  was  it  but  to  point  out  that 
certain  ideal  definitions,  being  contradictory,  are  neces- 
sarily invalid?  What  is  Being  then  but  the  Validity  of 
Ideas  ? 

Is  not  here,  then,  the  true  definition  of  Being?  As 
you  may  remember,  this  was,  in  fact,  the  third  on  our 
list  of  the  historical  conceptions  of  Being.  And  to  con- 
sider in  detail  this  Third  Conception,  which  identifies 
Reality  with  Validity,  the  Being  of  the  world  with  the 
truth  of  certain  ideas,  is  our  next  task. 

This  new  conception  of  Being,  as  we  shall  at  once  be 
able  to  see,  is  one  that,  just  at  the  present  time,  is  of 
exceeding  importance  in  connection  with  the  contempo- 
rary discussion  of  all  ultimate  problems. 

IV 

True  metaphysical  Realism,  in  all  its  abstractness,  still 
survives  amongst  us,  and  will  no  doubt,  as  an  opinion, 
last  as  long  as  our  race.  For  man  might  be  defined  as 
an  animal  who  ought  to  reflect,  but  who  very  generally 
cannot.  But  you  all  know  a  class  of  persons  whom  I 
may  as  well  call,  at  once,  the  Critical  Rationalists  of  our 


THE  OUTCOME  OF  MYSTICISM  205 

own  time.  These  thinkers  are  not  mere  empiricists. 
They  are  students  of  science,  sometimes  too  of  ethics, 
and  frequently  also  of  religion.  They  are  doubtful,  not 
infrequently  quite  negative,  in  their  attitude  towards 
Realism.  They  condemn  the  notion  of  things  in  them- 
selves, and  insist  either  that  man's  limited  insight  can 
never  reach  the  truth  about  any  realistically  conceived 
independent  world,  or  else  that  there  is  no  such  world 
at  all.  On  the  other  hand,  they  are  hostile  to  construc- 
tive Idealism,  regard  the  whole  recent  constructively 
idealistic  movement  as  a  mere  dream,  and  often  repeat 
that,  in  our  philosophy,  we  must  be  guided  solely  by  the 
spirit  of  Modern  Science.  In  theology  they  condemn 
theoretical  construction,  and  if  they  are  positively  dis- 
posed, prefer  a  reasonable  and  chastened  moral  faith. 
But  the  one  thing  to  which  they  remain  steadfastly 
loyal,  is  the  Validity  of  some  region  of  decidedly  imper- 
sonal Truth.  As  such  a  realm  of  impersonal  truth  they 
conceive  perhaps  the  moral  law,  perhaps  the  realm  of 
natural  law  revealed  to  us  by  science,  perhaps  the  law- 
ful structure  of  that  social  order  which  is  now  so  favor- 
ite a  topic  of  study.  Their  spiritual  father  is  Kant, 
although  they  often  ignore  their  parentage.  Their  philo- 
sophical creations  are  a  collection  of  impersonal  princi- 
ples in  whose  independent  or  realistic  Being  no  one 
altogether  believes,  but  whose  value  as  giving  reason- 
able unity  to  the  realm  of  phenomena,  justifies,  to  the 
present  age,  their  validity.  These  principles  are  such  as 
Energy ;  or  in  the  modern  sense  of'  the  term,  Evolution, 
viewed  as  the  name  for  a  universal  tendency  in  nature; 
or  the  Unconscious,  taken  as  a  principle  for  explaining 


206     THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

mental  life ;  or  yet  other  of  the  frequently  great  crea- 
tions of  Nineteenth  Century  thought.  These  are  names 
for  abstractions,  but  for  abstractions  based  in  some  cases 
upon  a  vast  experience,  and  in  these  cases  justified  pre- 
cisely as  empirically  valid  conceptions.  The  world  of 
these  principles  is  neither  independently  real  nor  yet 
illusory,  nor  yet  precisely  a  spiritual  reality.  It  is  said 
to  be  true  for  us  men.  In  that  world  the  older  faiths 
may  indeed  seem  endangered.  God  is,  from  such  a  point 
of  view,  no  longer  a  person,  not  yet  is  he  the  mystical 
Absolute.  The  impersonal  conception  of  a  Righteous 
Order  of  the  universe  remains.  Theology,  one  holds, 
must  reconstruct  its  notions  accordingly.  What  remain 
to  us  to-day  are  Virtual  Entities,  so  to  speak,  —  Laws 
and  Orders  of  truth,  —  objects  that  are  to  us  as  if  they 
were  finally  real.  This  as  if,  or  as  it  were,  becomes  to 
some  thinkers,  a  sort  of  ultimate  category.  One  no 
longer  proves  that  God  exists,  but  only  that,  It  is  as  if 
he  were.  God  too,  like  a  logarithm,  or  like  a  treaty 
of  peace  between  two  nations,  is  to  be,  to  such  minds, 
a  virtual  entity  or  else  nothing. 

Thinkers  of  this  general  type,  I  say,  you  all  know. 
Their  spirit,  as  you  read  modern  books,  you  have  con- 
stantly before  you.  Their  characteristic  metaphysical 
conceptions  are  founded  upon  this,  our  third  view  of 
the  ontological  predicate.  In  future  this  Third  Concep- 
tion may  therefore  come  to  be  remembered  as  the  typical 
ontological  idea  current  in  the  Nineteenth  Century,  —  in 
this  age  of  critical  rationalism,  and  of  a  cool  respect  for 
truths  which  do  everything  but  take  on  the  form  of 
individual  life. 


THE  OUTCOME  OF  MYSTICISM  207 

A  close  study  of  this  notion  of  what  it  is  to  be  real 
seems  therefore  justified  by  our  situation.  And  so  next, 
during  the  remainder  of  the  present  lecture,  I  shall  illus- 
trate by  various  cases  how  objects  recognized  in  one  way 
or  another  by  our  thought  may  suggest  this  form  of  the 
ontological  predicate.  Then,  at  the  next  lecture,  I  shall 
follow  very  briefly  some  of  the  earlier  stages  of  the  dif- 
ferentiation of  this  view  from  Realism  in  technical  phi- 
losophy, shall  deal  very  summarily  with  the  history  of 
the  conception  since  Kant  (because  only  since  Kant  it 
has  come  to  be  fully  differentiated  from  Realism),  and 
finally,  I  shall  show  how  this  conception  leads  us  inevi- 
tably beyond  itself  to  a  fourth  and  final  view  of  Being. 


As  one  of  the  purely  popular  meanings  of  the  onto- 
logical predicate  we  found,  in  our  second  lecture,  the 
notion  that  to  be  real  is  to  give  warrant  to  ideas,  to  be 
genuine.  By  contrast  we  found  popular  speech  calling 
an  object  whose  unreality  has  been  detected,  an  appear- 
ance, a  myth,  or  even  a  lie.  The  unreal  object  thus 
often  gets,  by  a  certain  transfer,  names  which  first  seem 
naturally  to  belong  rather  to  the  false  opinion,  to  the 
idea  itself,  that  has  misled  the  too  credulous  mind.  On 
the  other  hand,  the  real  can  be  depended  upon.  It  does 
not  deceive.  In  a  word,  it  is  true,  and  its  Being  is, 
somehow  or  other,  more  or  less  the  same  as  its  truth. 

Such  usage  is  so  far  only  popular.  It  implies  no  con- 
scious final  definition  of  Being.  But  this  popular  speech 
has  undoubtedly  been  influenced  by  a  philosophical  tra- 
dition that  dates,  in  our  European  thought,  back  to  Plato, 


208     THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

and  that  has  been  influenced  both  by  theology  and  by 
mathematical  science.  The  scholastic  theoiy  of  Being 
gave  expression  to  all  of  these  influences  together,  when, 
developing  a  discussion  of  Aristotle's  Metaphysics,  it  ex- 
pounded the  well-known  thesis :  Omne  Ens  est  Verum, 
or  in  another  form:  "Ens  and  Verum  are  convertible 
terms." 

It  is,  however,  still  the  case  that  one  who  asserts  this 
thesis,  or  its  various  popular  equivalents,  so  far  does 
not  commit  himself  to  any  particular  one  of  our  four 
technical  conceptions  of  what  real  Being  itself  funda- 
mentally means. .  For  the  scholastics  the  epithet  verum 
was  only  one  of  the  so-called  transcendental  predicates 
of  Being,  which  mentioned  an  universal  character,  rather 
than  a  defining  mark,  of  Reality.  We  are  now,  how- 
ever, to  sketch  a  theory  for  which  the  truth  belonging 
to  any  real  object  is  to  be  viewed  as  the  one  essential 
mark  in  terms  of  which  Reality  may  be  defined.  And 
this  truth  itself  is  defined  in  the  main  as  something, 
external  to  a  mere  idea,  to  which  that  idea  ought  to 
correspond. 

We  are  to  begin,  before  following  this  theory  into  its 
technical  philosophical  forms,  by  naming  some  examples 
of  objects  which  we  ordinarily  seem  to  call  real  mainly 
because  we  first  call  them  true.  As  a  fact,  you  cannot 
converse  for  a  quarter  of  an  hour  upon  topics  of  com- 
mon human  interest,  without  speaking  of  many  things 
that  all  the  company  present  will  tacitly  view  as  in 
some  objective  sense  real  objects,  as  not  "  mere  ideas " 
of  anybody,  as  in  other  words  facts,  while  at  the  same 
time,  if  you  look  closer,  you  will  find  that  these  ob- 


THE  OUTCOME  OF  MYSTICISM  209 

jects  are  not  viewed  by  anybody  present  as  real  in  the 
same  sense  in  which  physical  bodies,  or  the  atoms  of 
Democritus,  or  the  Monads  of  Leibniz,  or  Mr.  Spen- 
cer's Unknowable,  have  usually  been  regarded  as  real 
by  the  realistic  metaphysicians  who  have  believed  in  the 
latter  entities.  Those  other  objects  of  common  human 
interest  are  viewed,  by  common  sense,  namely,  not  as 
Independent  Beings,  which  would  retain  their  reality 
unaltered  even  if  nobody  ever  were  able  to  think  of 
them,  but  rather  as  objects  such  that,  while  people  can, 
and  often  do  think  of  them,  their  own  sole  Being  con- 
sists in  their  character  as  rendering  such  thoughts  about 
themselves  objectively  valid  for  everybody  concerned. 
Their  whole  esse  then  consists  in  their  value  as  giving 
warrant  and  validity  to  the  thoughts  that  refer  to 
them.  They  are  external  to  any  particular  ideas,  yet 
they  cannot  be  defined  independently  of  all  ideas. 

Do  you  ask  me  to  name  such  objects  of  ordinary 
conversation?  I  answer  at  once  by  asking  whether 
the  credit  of  a  commercial  house,  the  debts  that  a 
man  owes,  the  present  price  of  a  given  stock  in  the 
stock  market,  yes,  the  market  price  current  of  any 
given  commodity;  or,  again,  whether  the  rank  of  a 
given  official,  the  social  status  of  any  member  of  the 
community,  the  marks  received  by  a  student  at  any 
examination;  or,  to  pass  to  another  field,  whether  this 
or  that  commercial  partnership,  or  international  treaty, 
or  still  once  more,  whether  the  British  Constitution, — 
whether,  I  say,  any  or  all  of  the  objects  thus  named, 
will  not  be  regarded,  in  ordinary  conversation,  as  in 
some  sense  real  beings,  facts  possessed  of  a  genuinely 


210     THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

ontological  character  ?  One  surely  says :  The  debt  exists ; 
the  credit  is  a  fact;  the  constitution  has  objective  Be- 
ing. Yet  none  of  these  facts,  prices,  credits,  debts, 
ranks,  standings,  marks,  partnerships,  Constitutions,  are 
viewed  as  real  independently  of  any  and  of  all  possible 
ideas  that  shall  refer  to  them.  The  objects  now  under 
our  notice  have,  moreover,  like  physical  things,  very 
various  grades  of  supposed  endurance  and  of  recog- 
nized significance.  Some  vanish  hourly.  Others  may 
outlast  centuries.  The  prices  vary  from  day  to  day; 
the  credits  may  not  survive  the  next  panic;  the  Con- 
stitution may  very  slowly  evolve  for  ages.  None  of 
these  objects,  moreover,  can  be  called  mere  ideas  inside 
of  any  man's  head.  None  of  them  are  arbitrary  crea- 
tions of  definition.  The  individual  may  find  them  as 
stubborn  facts  as  are  material  objects.  The  prices  in 
the  stock  market  may  behave  like  irresistible  physical 
forces.  And  yet  none  of  these  objects  would  continue 
to  exist,  as  they  are  now  supposed  to  exist,  unless 
somebody  frequently  thought  of  them,  recognized  them, 
and  agreed  with  his  fellows  about  them.  Their  fashion 
of  supposed  Being  is  thus  ordinarily  conceived  as  at 
once  ideal  and  extra-ideal.  They  are  not  "things  in 
themselves,"  and  they  are  not  mere  facts  of  private 
consciousness.  You  have  to  count  upon  them  as  ob- 
jective. But  if  ideas  vanished  from  the  world,  they 
would  vanish  also.  They  then  are  the  objects  of  the 
relatively  external  meanings  of  ideas.  Yet  they  are 
not  wholly  separable  from  internal  meanings. 

Well,   all   of  these   facts   are   examples   of    beings   of 
which  it  seems  easiest  to  say  that  they  are  real  mainly 


THE  OUTCOME  OF  MYSTICISM  211 

in  so  far  as  they  serve  to  give  truth  or  validity  to  a 
certain  group  of  assertions  about  each  one  of  them. 

I  next  turn  to  another  region  of  examples.  I  have 
already  more  than  once  referred  to  the  sort  of  Being 
that,  in  many  minds,  attaches  to  the  moral  law.  What 
kind  of  Reality  then,  in  the  universe,  has  justice,  or 
charity,  or  in  general  the  good?  Here  indeed  we  are 
once  more  upon  ground  that  the  Platonic  dialogues 
have  rendered  very  familiar,  —  a  ground  too  that  the 
controversies  of  later  forms  of  Realism  and  Idealism 
have  caused  to  appear,  to  many  minds,  too  much  tram- 
pled over  to  be  any  longer  fruitful.  I  venture  only 
at  the  moment  to  insist  that  in  this  case  familiarity 
has  simply  not  meant  clearness,  and  that  it  is  far  easier 
to  talk  of  certain  questions  as  hopelessly  antiquated^ 
than  to  give  them  any  precise  answer. 

Of  course  it  is  possible  to  undertake  to  regard  the 
moral  law,  or  such  objects  as  justice,  in  the  same  light 
in  which  we  have  just  been  viewing  the  facts  that  re- 
sult from  social  law  and  from  convention.  Every  stu- 
dent of  Ethics  knows,  however,  the  arguments  in  favor 
of  giving  the  ethical  truths  a  more  permanent  type  of 
validity  than  we  assign  to  prices  and  to  social  conven- 
tions. In  any  case,  however,  the  mention  of  this 
familiar  Platonic  group  of  instances  carries  us  at  once 
over  to  a  form  of  reality  whose  formally  eternal  valid- 
ity is,  to  the  once  awakened  metaphysical  sense,  some- 
thing both  marvellous  and  unquestionable. 


212     THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

VI 

In  what  way,  then,  in  the  next  place,  is  the  value 
of  TT,  that  is,  the  ratio  of  diameter  and  circumference 
in  the  circle,  a  real  fact  in  the  universe?  Physically, 
one  can  never  verify  the  existence  of  any  perfect  cir- 
cle in  the  natural  world;  empirically,  one  can  never, 
by  actual  measurement,  discover  in  experience  the  pres- 
ence of  two  lengths  thus  related.  Butj  geometrically  and 
analytically,  one  can  prove  what  is  often  called  the 
"Existence,"  as  well  as  certain  of  what  are  often  called 
the  real  properties  of  the  ratio  or  quantity  TT.  The 
late  Professor  Cayley,  in  a  noted  passage  of  his  Presi- 
dential address  before  the  British  Association,  asserted, 
as  you  may  remember,  that  the  mathematical  objects, 
such  as  the  true  circles,  are,  if  anything,  more  real 
than  the  physical  imitations  of  circles  that  we  can 
make,  since,  as  he  said,  it  is  only  by  comparison  with 
the  true  circle  that  the  imperfections  of  the  physical 
imitation  of  a  circle  can  be  defined.  The  Platonic 
spirit  of  this  assertion  is  easily  recognizable,  and  at 
all  events  it  reminds  us  that  a  distinctly  modern  and 
scientific  experience  can  lead  a  man  to  assert,  without 
(as  I  suppose)  any  professionally  metaphysical  bias, 
that  the  most  real  objects  are  the  ones  of  which  it  is 
hard  to  affirm  any  character  except  that  they  have  an 
Eternal  Truth.  This  case  of  the  geometrical  figures 
is  of  old  a  favorite  one  in  philosophy.  In  recalling  it 
here,  I  may  also  properly  point  out  that  the  very  latest 
discussions  about  what  has  been  called  the  reality  of 
Euclidean  and  non-Euclidean  spaces,  have  given  a  wholly 


THE  OUTCOME  OF  MYSTICISM  213 

new  life  to  this  old  story ;  and  the  realm  of  that  which 
undertakes  to  be  real  only  in  so  far  as  it  is  true,  is  a 
realm  of  very  distinctly  present  interest  for  the  philoso- 
phy of  recent  natural  science. 

As  for  the  purely  mathematical  instances,  in  general, 
however,  they  are  not  at  all  limited  to  the  geometrical 
ones.  Modern  Analysis,  and  the  Theory  of  Functions, 
contain  very  many  propositions  of  the  class  that  are 
sometimes  called  "Existence-Theorems."  That  there 
exists  a  root  for  any  algebraic  equation  of  the  nth 
degree ;  that  there  exists  a  differential  coefficient  for 
a  given  function ;  that,  on  the  other  hand,  there  exist 
functions  continuous  throughout  given  intervals  which 
still  have  within  those  intervals  no  differential  coeffi- 
cients ;  that  the  limits  of  this  or  that  variable  quantity 
(for  instance,  of  convergent  infinite  series),  exist:  — 
such  are  examples  that  may  be  more  or  less  familiar 
even  to  students  who  have,  like  myself,  to  confine 
themselves  to  decidedly  elementary  mathematics.  Avoid- 
ing, however,  the  mathematical  form  of  expression,  one 
may  here  try  to  make  clear  the  metaphysically  impor- 
tant nature  of  theorems  of  this  sort  very  much  as  follows : 
In  pure  mathematics,  the  student  deals  with  certain  ob- 
jects that,  upon  their  face,  are  the  products  of  purely 
arbitrary  definitions.  The  mathematician  builds  up  these 
his  objects,  as,  for  instance,  the  objects  of  pure  Analysis, 
very  much  as  he  pleases.  His  ideas  are  in  so  far  his 
facts.  So  far  one  would  suppose,  then,  that  no  ques- 
tions about  existence  would  trouble  the  mathematician. 
But  when  one  looks  closer,  one  sees  that  when  the 
mathematician  has  once  built  up  such  a  notion  of  some 


214     THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

realm  of  ideal  objects,  there  may  then  arise  the  further 
question  whether,  within  that  realm,  an  object  that  meets 
certain  new  requirements,  the  special  requirements,  let 
us  say,  of  a  given  problem,  can  be  found  or  not.  And 
this  question  is  one  whose  answer,  for  the  mathemati- 
cian, is  indeed  hereupon  not  at  all  a  matter  of  his 
arbitrary  choice.  He  has,  to  be  sure,  created  his  world 
of  mathematical  objects.  This  world  is  there,  as  it 
were,  by  his  decree,  or  is  real,  as  ordinary  realists 
would  say,  only  in  his  head.  It  is  so  far  like  a 
child's  fairyland.  But  once  created,  this  world,  in  its 
own  eternal  and  dignified  way,  is  as  stubborn  as  the 
rebellious  spirits  that  a  magician  might  have  called  out 
of  the  deep. 

Even  the  poets  have  told  us  how  their  heroes,  once 
created,  have  often  become,  as  it  were,  alive  after  their 
own  fashion,  so  that  the  poet  could  no  longer  volun- 
tarily control  how  they  should  behave.  Much  more, 
and  for  a  far  more  exact  reason,  are  the  mathemati- 
cian's objects,  when  once  created,  independent  of  his 
private  will.  Thus  then  there  may  indeed  arise  the 
question  whether,  as  one  may  now  express  the  matter, 
there  exists  any  object,  within  a  given  mathematical 
realm,  possessed  of  certain  properties.  The  ivhat  of 
this  now  sought  object  is  defined,  in  advance,  in  terms 
of  these  mentioned  properties,  —  properties  which,  as 
just  said,  usually  result  from  the  conditions  of  a  spe- 
cial problem.  The  that  of  the  object,  its  presence  as 
a  member  of  the  ideal  realm  which  the  mathematician 
has  before  defined,  is  a  problem  such  as  may  cause 
almost  endless  trouble  before  it  is  solved.  The  pro- 


THE  OUTCOME  OF  MYSTICISM  215 

cesses  involved  in  such  ontological  or  existential  so- 
lutions are,  however,  very  instructive  as  to  the  nature 
of  the  ideal  world;  and  every  student  of  metaphysics 
ought  to  have  at  least  an  elementary  acquaintance  with 
a  few  concrete  instances  of  just  such  investigations  in 
mathematics. 

If  one  hears  children  disputing  over  a  fairyland  of 
their  own  invention,  and  if  the  question  arises  whether 
or  no  there  exists  in  that  fairyland  a  particular  being, 
say  a  fairy  with  six  wings,  a  listener  to  the  dispute 
easily  grows  impatient.  "Why  talk  of  reality  or  of 
unreality?"  he  says.  "The  six-winged  fairy  exists  in 
your  fairyland  if  you  make  him,  and  this  is  true  because 
you  are  not  talking  of  any  real  being  at  all,  but  only 
of  make  believe."  Yet  in  the  mathematical  realm  it  is 
not  altogether  so.  Within  limits,  you  create  as  you 
will,  but  the  limits  once  found,  are  absolute.  Unsub- 
stantial, in  one  way,  as  fairyland,  the  creations  of  the 
pure  mathematician's  ideality  still  may  require  of  their 
maker  as  rigid,  and  often  as  baffling  a  search  for  a  given 
kind  or  case  of  mathematical  existence,  as  if  he  were  an 
astronomer  testing  the  existence  of  the  fifth  satellite  of 
Jupiter,  or  of  the  variables  of  a  telescopic  star-cluster. 

An  equation  of  the  wth  degree,  for  instance,  is  such  an 
ideal  mathematical  creation.  I  remember  a  teacher  of 
mathematics  in  a  far  western  American  town,  who  used 
to  scoff  at  the  troubles  of  his  historically  more  famous 
colleagues  regarding  the  noted  theorem  as  to  the  exist- 
ence of  a  root  of  such  an  equation.  The  equation,  as 
my  friend  in  substance  said,  was  a  mathematician's  arbi- 
trary creation.  There  was  no  use  in  calling  it  an  equa- 


216     THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

tion  unless  it  had  a  root.  And  since  the  mathematician 
made  the  equation,  and  called  it  such,  it  had  a  root  if 
the  mathematician  said  that  it  had.  To  discuss  the 
question  was  thus  as  useless  as  to  discuss  the  existence 
of  the  six-winged  fairy  in  the  fairyland  of  your  own 
creation.  My  friend  would  only  admit  the  significance 
of  inquiring  what  the  value  of  any  of  the  n  roots  actu- 
ally in  question  might  be. 

And,  as  a  fact,  of  course,  my  friend's  argument,  de- 
spite its  quarrel  with  the  labors  of  Gauss  and  the  other 
algebraists,  had  its  own  relative  force.  A  theory  of 
algebraic  quantities  is  conceivable  which  should  arbi- 
trarily begin  one  of  its  sections  by  defining  certain  sym- 
bols as  the  roots  of  algebraic  equations,  and  which 
should  then  proceed  to  demonstrate  the  properties  of 
these  symbols,  as  well  as  of  the  equations  in  terms  of 
the  symbols.  Such  a  method  of  procedure  has  indeed 
been  proposed  as  a  formal  device  in  the  course  of  the 
more  recent  history  of  the  theory  of  equations.  But  as 
an  historical  fact,  the  mathematicians,  in  the  first  place, 
actually  proceeded  otherwise,  defined,  apart  from  the 
general  theory  of  equations,  their  realm  of  algebraic 
quantities,  both  of  those  called  "real"  and  of  those 
called  "complex,"  defined  also  their  general  equations, 
and  then,  indeed,  had  upon  their  hands  the  problem  of 
proving  that  within  that  realm  of  the  algebraic  quanti- 
ties, as  thus  previously  defined,  there  could  be  found 
such  as  would  furnish  their  general  equation  with 
roots.  Hereupon,  indeed,  the  resulting  problem  was  one 
whose  solution  was  no  longer,  like  the  creation  of  the 
six-winged  fairy,  a  matter  of  arbitrary  choice.  The 


THE  OUTCOME  OF  MYSTICISM  217 

ingenuity  of  a  Gauss  was  taxed  to  furnish  some  of  the 
known  solutions.  The  problem  has  proved  fundamental 
for  algebraic  theory.  And  so  my  Western  friend  was 
wrong. 

Of  course  this  is  but  a  single  instance.  Very  many 
other  mathematical  cases  can  be  found  where  problems 
as  to  real  Being,  of  the  type  here  at  issue,  have  been 
the  topic  not  only  of  inquiry,  but  of  serious  and  some- 
times pretty  persistent  error  on  the  part  of  even  rioted 
mathematicians  themselves.  Such  was  the  fortune  of  the 
older  Theory  of  Functions  with  regard  to  the  existence 
of  the  differential  coefficients  of  continuous  functions. 
This  case  cannot  be  fully  explained  in  non-mathematical 
language.  It  is  enough  here  to  say  that  the  mathe- 
matical world  contains  countless  ideal  entities  of  the 
type  called  Functions,  and  these  are  beings  which  have 
values  corresponding  to  the  values  of  certain  quantities 
called  "independent  variables."  The  values  of  the  "func- 
tions "  therefore,  in  general,  vary  when  the  "  independent 
variables"  vary.  If  the  functions  vary  continuously, 
whenever  the  variables  vary  continuously,  the  variation 
of  the  functions  may  correspond  to  such  a  physical  pro- 
cess as  a  movement,  or  to  such  a  process  as  the  descrip- 
tion of  a  curve,  on  a  surface,  by  a  continuous  motion. 
Now  such  an  ideally  definable  process  generally  has  prop- 
erties corresponding  to  the  rate  of  the  physical  motion, 
or  to  the  instantaneous  direction  of  movement  of  a  point 
on  the  curve.  And  these  properties  of  the  functions  in 
question  may  be  investigated  by  constructing  certain 
other  ideal  entities,  related  to  the  original  functions, 
and  derived  by  a  well-known  process  from  them.  The 


218     THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

new  ideal  entities  are  called  Derived  Functions,  or 
Differential  Coefficients,  and  for  a  long  time  it  was 
assumed  as  almost  an  axiom  that  every  function  con- 
tinuous within  given  intervals  must  have,  within  those 
intervals,  a  derived  function,  or  differential  coefficient. 
This  seemed  as  axiomatic  as  the  assertion  that  every 
movement  must  take  place  at  a  given,  even  if  con- 
stantly altering  speed,  or  that  a  point  moving  on  a 
curve  must  at  every  instant  be  moving  in  a  given 
instantaneous  direction.  For  the  derived  function,  or 
differential  coefficient,  was  an  ideal  entity  correspond- 
ing to  such  facts  as  momentary  velocity,  or  instantane- 
ous direction  of  movement.  This  assumption,  namely 
the  existence  of  objects  called  the  differential  coefficients 
in  question,  persisted  in  the  text-books  until  instances, 
first  few,  and  then  many,  were  produced,  where  beings 
of  the  type  in  question,  namely  continuous  functions, 
were  discovered,  which  had  no  differential  coefficients 
whatever.  How  this  was  possible,  I  cannot  pause  to  de- 
fine, but  I  mention  this  now  noted  example  of  a  pretty 
persistent  mathematical  error,  because  it  exemplifies 
how,  in  the  world  of  pure  mathematical  creations,  you 
can  have  problems  about  existence  which  for  a  while 
seem  as  baffling  as  similar  problems  in  physics  and  in 
natural  history.  Even  mathematical  science,  then,  has 
had,  within  the  eternal  shadowland  of  its  creations,  to 
deal,  as  it  has  grown,  with  sharp  contrasts  between  myth 
and  fact,  between  false  report  and  real  existence, — with 
contrasts,  I  once  more  insist,  as  striking  as  those  known 
in  the  realm  of  astronomy  or  of  history.  The  difference 
between  the  one  science  and  the  others  lies  in  the  fact 


THE  OUTCOME  OF  MYSTICISM  219 

that  the  mathematician,  because  of  his  far  more  con- 
trollable subject-matter,  is  generally  surer  of  finding  his 
way  erelong  past  these  contrasts  to  the  truth  that  he 
seeks,  while  in  the  physical  sciences  the  ontological 
errors  may  persist  longer. 

As  to  the  method  of  work  used  by  mathematicians  in 
such  cases,  where  the  existence  of  an  object  is  in  ques- 
tion, I  again  speak  quite  as  a  layman  in  this  field ;  but, 
so  far  as  I  have  observed,  the  mathematicians,  in  proving 
the  sort  of  existence  of  which  they  speak,  proceed  very 
much  like  students  of  other  types  of  real  Being.  To 
prove  the  existence  of  an  object  whose  what  is  already 
stated,  but  whose  that  is  in  question,  the  mathematician 
may  simply  produce,  as  it  were,  before  your  eyes,  an 
object  of  the  desired  type,  and  may  then  let  you  observe 
that  it  meets  the  requirement.  In  such  cases  he  works 
somewhat  as  a  naturalist  might  do.  He  shows  you  the 
object  and  says :  "  See,  it  exists."  Or  again,  he  may  be 
unable  to  do  this ;  but  instead  he  may  try  a  sort  of  ex- 
periment with  his  already  accessible  ideal  objects,  and  the 
result  of  this  experiment  may  give  you  an  indirect  but 
infallible  sign  that  a  being  of  the  precise  sort  here  in 
question  must  exist,  even  if  it  cannot  be  directly  pro- 
duced. This  more  indirect  method  of  showing  that  a 
being  of  a  given  type  exists,  may  roughly  be  compared  to 
the  devices  by  which  the  spectroscope  reveals  the  exist- 
ence of  an  element  in  a  star,  by  showing  the  characteristic 
lines  of  the  element. 

In  brief,  then,  in  talking  of  this  his  shadowland  of  ideal 
beings,  the  pure  mathematician  illustrates,  in  ways  often 
very  remarkable,  how  manifold  may  be  the  meanings  that 


220     THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

can  attach  to  the  word  fact,  and  how  ill  those  appreciate 
truth  who  suppose  an  object  disposed  of  by  relegating  it 
to  the  world  of  "  pure  ideas."  An  important  elementary 
lesson  in  metaphysics  comes  when  we  liberalize  somewhat 
our  notions  of  what  it  is  to  be,  not  only  by  examining  the 
various  senses  in  which  the  word  has  been  used,  but  by 
following  these  senses  into  the  various  sorts  of  examples 
which  make  their  variety  first  really  appreciated. 

Nor  are  the  foregoing  the  only  marks  of  an  ontological, 
or,  so  to  speak,  substantial  character  about  the  world  of 
mathematical  fact.  A  very  extended,  but  recently  very 
rapidly  growing,  series  of  developments  in  this  mathe- 
matical realm  tends  constantly  afresh  to  show  the  mar- 
vellous character  of  the  world  of  validity  by  revealing 
unexpected  unities  and  connections  amongst  those  of  its 
facts  and  laws  which  have  been  the  result  of  seemingly 
quite  independent  definition,  and  which  have  been  reached 
in  the  course  of  researches  that  originally  had  no  con- 
nection whatever. 

VII 

By  this  long  series  of  instances  of  our  third  type  of 
real  beings,  I  have  meant  to  show  that  there  are  reasons 
why  a  philosophical  conception,  specially  planned  to  meet 
such  cases,  should  be  attempted  as  a  conception  of  the 
meaning  of  the  ontological  predicate.  The  obvious  con- 
trast between  beings  of  this  type  and  the  beings  of  tech- 
nical realism  proper,  in  our  former  sense  of  that  word,  is 
that  the  entities  of  the  metaphysical  realist  are  supposed 
to  be  what  they  are  quite  independently  of  any  knowl- 
edge, actual,  or  even  possible,  which  may  be  supposed, 


THE  OUTCOME   OF  MYSTICISM  221 

from  without,  to  refer  to  them,  so  that  if  such  knowledge 
vanished  from  the  universe,  or  if  no  external  knowledge 
of  them  had  ever  come  to  be,  the  real  beings  would 
remain  just  what  they  are.  On  the  other  hand,  how- 
ever, the  realities  of  the  present  type  exist  explicitly  as 
Objects  of  Possible  Knowledge.  Their  whole  defined 
Being  is  exhausted  by  their  validity  when  regarded  from 
the  point  of  view  of  such  possible  knowledge.  If  nobody 
had  ever  recognized  the  British  Constitution,  or  the 
prices,  credits,  debts,  marks,  and  ranks  aforesaid*  these 
objects  could  not  be  said  to  be  able  to  retain  any  being, 
although  now  that  they  are  recognized,  such  objects 
appear  to  have  a  genuine  being,  and  to  be  relatively 
independent  of  this  or  that  individual  judgment. 

The  case  of  the  eternal  truths,  such  as  the  ethical,  or 
still  more  obviously  the  mathematical  truths,  is  more  like 
the  case  of  the  atoms  or  monads  of  a  thoroughgoing  real- 
ism, since  the  eternal  verities  are  said  to  have  been  valid 
before  any  human  mathematician  or  moralist  conceived 
them,  and  to  remain  true  even  if  men  forget  them,  or,  as 
in  case  of  the  value  of  TT,  are  physically  unable  to  verify 
them  in  concrete  circles.  Yet,  on  the  other  hand,  their 
case  has  its  own  peculiar  puzzle,  in  that,  when  the  mathe- 
matician himself  first  conceives  of  his  equations  and  of 
his  functions,  he  seems,  as  we  have  said,  to  be  engaged  in 
an  act  of  perfectly  free  construction,  as  if  he  were  build- 
ing in  fairyland.  Yet  the  familiar  miracle  of  this  mathe- 
matical realm  is  that,  after  one  has  built,  he  discovers 
that  the  form  of  his  edifice  is  somehow  eternal,  and  that 
there  are  existences  which  this  form  has  preestablished, 
so  that  he  himself  looks  with  wonder  to  find  whether  this 


222     THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

or  that  object  exists  in  his  new  world  at  all.  And  mean- 
while, despite  this  eternity  and  this  relative  independence 
of  private  ideas  which  characterize  the  mathematical 
objects,  and  give  the  world  of  Forms  unity,  the  objects 
and  the  forms  exist,  if  at  all,  not  as  the  atoms  and 
monads  of  realism  exist,  nor  as  the  things  in  themselves 
of  Kant.  For  nobody,  according  to  Realism,  is  able  to 
discover  the  things  in  themselves,  the  supposed  entities 
of  Realism,  by  any  process  of  consciously  free  ideal  con- 
struction, such  as  in  fact  produces  the  mathematician's 
ideas.  On  the  other  hand,  the  mathematical  beings 
undertake  to  be  real  just  as  objects  of  possible  thought, 
as  valid  truths,  and  not  as  independent  of  all  thinking 
processes,  whether  actual  or  possible. 

These  contrasts  and  problems  may  weary.  But  it  is 
necessary  to  face  them.  The  world  of  validity  is  in- 
deed, in  its  ultimate  constitution,  the  eternal  world.  It 
seems  to  us  so  far  a  very  impersonal  world  and  a  very 
cold  and  unemotional  realm,  —  the  very  opposite  of  that 
of  the  mystic.  Before  we  are  done  with  it  we  shall 
find  it  in  fact  the  most  personal  and  living  of  worlds. 
Just  now  it  appears  to  us  a  realm  of  bodiless  universal 
meanings.  Erelong  we  shall  discover  that  it  is  a  realm 
of  individuals,  whose  unity  is  in  One  Individual,  and 
that  theory  means,  in  this  eternal  world,  not  mere 
theory,  but  Will  and  Life. 


LECTURE   VI 


LECTURE   VI 

VALIDITY  AND   EXPERIENCE 

AFTER  having  abandoned  the  abstractions  of  pure 
Realism  and  pure  Mysticism,  we  went  on,  at  the  last 
time,  to  the  study  of  a  Third  Conception  of  Being.  We 
saw  at  all  events  how  vain  it  is  for  any  one  to  assume 
that,  if  you  doubt  metaphysical  Realism,  if  you  ques- 
tion whether  the  world  can  be  real  independently  of 
knowledge,  of  ideas,  and  of  definition,  you  must  neces- 
sarily be  a  mere  sceptic,  and  believe  in  no  authority 
whatever,  and  in  no  world  at  all.  On  the  contrary,  as 
we  saw,  even  ordinary  conversation  is  full  of  assertions 
that  objects  have  genuine  Being  which  are  explicitly 
not  objects  independent  of  experience,  or  of  definition, 
or  of  ideas.  Such  supposed  genuine  beings,  which  are 
still  not  realistic  entities,  we  found  exemplified  by  the 
prices,  debts,  and  credits  of  the  commercial  world,  by 
analogous  facts  in  the  world  of  valid  social  estimates, 
and  by  the  moral  law.  And  then,  passing  from  com- 
mon sense  to  science,  we  pointed  out  the  still  more 
marvellous  types  of  existence  that  people  the  eternal 
fairyland  of  mathematical  construction.  We  saw  how 
the  mathematical  entities  appear  to  have  all  the  variety, 
the  stubbornness,  and  the  frequently  unexpected  char- 
acters which,  in  the  ordinary  world,  are  said  to  belong 
to  real  beings.  The  mathematician's  realm  is  in  one 
Q  226 


226    THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

sense  his  free  creation.  In  another  sense  it  is  a  world 
where  that  comes  to  light  which  he,  in  his  private 
capacity,  had  neither  intended  nor  anticipated.  In  that 
world  he  can  long  go  astray,  can  hold  false  views  as  to 
his  own  creations,  and,  just  as  if  he  were  working  in  a 
laboratory,  can  have  these  views  set  right  by  the  out- 
come of  further  carefully  planned  experience,  whose 
instruction  he  submissively  awaits  as  if  he  were  in  no 
sense  the  creator  of  any  object  present.  Like  any 
other  student  of  Real  Being,  he  observes  and  experi- 
ments. The  nature  with  which  he  deals  is  at  once 
ideal  and  eternal,  at  once  rigid  and  free.  The  most 
surprising  analogies  are  often  discovered  linking  to- 
gether its  most  widely  sundered  and  seemingly  inde- 
pendent regions.  The  mathematician  too  has  his  news 
of  the  day,  his  unexpected  events,  his  fortune,  so  to 
speak,  even  in  the  realm  of  a  Being  that  explicitly  is 
only  in  so  far  as  it  is  conceived. 

Plainly,  then,  the  realm  of  Validity  has  a  good 
many  persuasively  ontological  characters.  When  we 
enter  it,  we  need  not  come  as  sceptics  or  as  mere 
victims  of  fantasy.  What  we  there  learn  is  that  con- 
structive imagination  has  its  own  rigid  and  objective 
constitution,  precisely  in  so  far  as  its  processes  unite 
freedom  with  clear  consciousness. 

And  so,  as  we  saw,  it  is  possible,  at  least  by  way  of 
trial,  to  undertake  to  define  Being  wholly  in  terms  of 
validity,  to  conceive  that  whoever  says,  of  any  object, 
It  is,  means  only  that  a  certain  idea,  —  perhaps  an  idea 
suggested  by  passing  experience,  perhaps  the  thought 
of  an  empirically  discovered  law  in  a  natural  science, 


VALIDITY   AND   EXPERIENCE  227 

perhaps  a  free  construction  of  an  ideal  object  in  mathe- 
matics,—  but  in  any  case  an  idea,  is  valid,  has  truth, 
defines  an  experience  that,  at  least  as  a  mathematical 
ideal,  and  perhaps  as  an  empirical  event,  is  determinately 
possible.  The  truth,  validity,  or  determinate  possibility 
of  the  experience  in  question,  may  be,  so  far  as  yet 
appears,  either  transient  or  eternal,  either  relative  or 
absolute,  either  something  valid  for  a  limited  group  of 
people,  or  something  valid  for  all  possible  rational 
beings.  But  in  any  case,  this  third  definition  of  Being 
attempts  to  identify  the  validity  of  the  idea  with  the 
true  Being  of  the  fact  defined  by  the  idea. 


Our  Third  Conception  of  Being  has  been  thus  stated 
and  illustrated.  It  remains  here  next  to  follow  in  the 
briefest  outline  its  history  as  an  ontological  conception, 
before  trying  to  estimate  its  final  value. 

As  now  repeatedly  recognized  in  these  lectures,  our 
Third  Conception  of  Being  is,  in  European  thought, 
partly  an  indirect  result  of  Plato's  doctrine.1  But  it  is 
also  probably  the  historical  fact,  as  we  saw  in  our  dis- 
cussion of  Realism,  that  Plato  himself  did  not,  on  the 
whole,  conceive  his  own  Ideas  in  this  way.  The  origi- 
nal Platonic  argument  about  the  Ideas  amounts  in 
general  to  saying,  on  the  one  hand,  that  only  what 

1  That  what  I  here  call  the  Third  Conception  of  Being  was  in  essence 
Plato's  concept,  was  the  thesis,  as  is  well  known,  of  Lotze  —  a  thesis 
which  has  often  been  discussed.  Teichmiiller  and  Zeller  agree  in  reject- 
ing Lotze's  interpretation  of  Plato ;  and,  in  the  main,  I  here  follow  their 
authority. 


228     THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

Plato  calls  the  Ideas  are  of  such  nature  as  to  be  truly 
and  eternally  independent  realities,  and  on  the  other 
hand,  that  the  Ideas,  while  thus  independently  real,  are 
to  be  so  denned  as  to  explain  the  universality  of  knowl- 
edge, and  the  eternal  validity  of  truth.  The  Platonic 
Ideas  were  therefore  realistic  entities,  in  the  sense  of 
our  first  conception  of  what  it  is  to  be.  They  constituted 
an  incorporeal  world  of  independent  realities.  But  the 
arguments  used  for  their  reality,  and  the  relations  which 
they  bore  to  ethical  and  to  other  permanent  truths,  as 
well  as  the  fact  that  they  corresponded,  not  to  our  in- 
dividual but  to  our  universal  conceptions,  gave  them 
characters  which  inevitably  led  them,  in  the  later  Pla- 
tonic tradition,  to  assume  forms  more  and  more  similar, 
either  to  beings  of  the  type  now  in  question,  or  to  the 
sort  of  Being  yet  to  be  defined  by  our  Fourth  Concep- 
tion of  Reality,  and  hereafter  to  be  treated.  The  Neo- 
Platonic  doctrine  identified  the  Platonic  Ideas  with  the 
thoughts  of  the  divine  Intelligence.  St.  Augustine,  in 
a  proof  of  God's  existence,  identified  God  with  Veritas. 
St.  Thomas,  in  explaining  the  relation  of  the  Ideas  to 
God,  was  led  to  an  interesting  form  of  our  present  or 
Third  Conception  of  Being;  and  post- Kantian  idealism 
has  remodelled  the  Platonic  Ideas,  on  the  whole,  after 
the  plan  first  suggested  by  the  Neo-Platonic  doctrine. 
In  brief,  then,  Plato's  concept  of  Being,  while  techni- 
cally realistic,  contains  tendencies  that  inevitably  lead 
to  the  differentiation  of  other  ontological  conceptions. 
And  so  our  present  or  Third  Conception  of  Being  is,  in 
large  part,  indirectly  due  to  Plato. 

Nearer  to  our  present  form  of   the   ontological   predi- 


VALIDITY  AND  EXPERIENCE  229 

cate  comes,  however,  Aristotle's  conception  of  Possible 
Being,  a  conception  which  plays  a  great  part  in  the 
whole  Aristotelian  theory  of  Nature.  The  ens  in  poten- 
tia  of  the  Aristotelian  system  occupies  a  place  in  a 
realistic  doctrine.  Aristotle  insists  that  possibilities  are 
in  one  sense  real  beings.  Is  not  an  architect  a  house- 
builder  even  when  he  is  not  building  houses?  Is  not 
the  sleeper  potentially  awake?  Is  not  every  natural 
process  the  realization  of  possibility? 

But  the  doctrine  of  course  has  its  obscurities.  Where, 
in  the  independently  real  world,  which  Aristotle  all  the 
while  assumes,  are  the  mere  possibilities  when  they  are 
not  yet  realized?  If  one  fairly  faces  this  question,  one 
finds  that  the  possibilities  appear  to  be  in  some  sense 
ideal.  They  suggest  even  to  Aristotle  his  theory  of 
Nature  as  desiring  or  willing  the  yet  unfulfilled  possibil- 
ities,—  a  theory  to  which  he  nowhere  gives  a  perfectly 
rounded  expression.  And  it  often  seems  as  if  the 
Possible  Being  of  this  Aristotelian  doctrine  would  have 
to  be  expressed  in  terms  of  validity  rather  than  in 
terms  of  the  mere  realistic  entities  themselves.  It  is 
true  that  the  architect  can  build,  the  sleeper  wake. 
These  truths  are  valid.  They  are,  for  Aristotle,  valid 
about  independently  real  beings;  and  his  doctrine  is 
that  there  is  also  an  independent  or  realistic  type  of 
Being  corresponding  to  their  validity;  but  this  sort  of 
Being,  this  ens  in  potentia,  tends  on  the  whole  to  assume 
the  essentially  ideal  form  of  our  present  conception  of 
what  it  is  to  be.  Aristotle,  in  any  case,  never  really 
solved  the  problem  of  the  relation  of  these  two  types 
of  being. 


A  good  while  later,  in  the  history  of  thought,  the 
Scholastic  Theory  of  Being,  as  I  a  moment  since  ob- 
served, met  with  still  a  new  instance  of  our  present 
sort  of  reality.  This  instance  brings  us  directly  on  to 
theological  ground. 

St.  Augustine,  who  stands  historically  on  the  boun- 
dary line  between  the  earlier  and  later  philosophy  of  the 
church,  proved  God's  existence  by  this  noted  argument : 
—  There  must  be  a  Veritas,  a  Truth.  For  if  you  deny 
that  there  is  a  truth,  you  assert  that  it  is  true  that 
there  is  no  truth;  and  then  you  contradict  yourself. 
The  sum  total  of  truth,  conceived  as  a  unity,  is,  how- 
ever, the  very  essence  of  God.  This  argument,  in  one 
direction,  looks  backwards  towards  Neo-Platonic  doc- 
trine. St.  Augustine's  world  of  Veritas  is  the  Nous  of 
Plotinus.  In  another  direction,  the  Augustinian  proof 
of  God's  existence  leads  on  to  St.  Anselm's  Ontological 
Proof.  The  representative  philosophy  of  the  greater 
Scholastic  period  abandoned  both  St.  Augustine's  and 
St.  Anselm's  proof  as  invalid,  but  retained  the  concep- 
tion of  Veritas  as  part  of  the  definition  of  the  divine 
nature. 

The  result  is  the  form  of  our  Third  Conception,  to 
which  we  next  mean  to  call  attention.  In  the  classic 
doctrine  of  St.  Thomas  Aquinas,  the  theory  of  the  na- 
ture of  God,  to  which  we  referred  in  our  second  lec- 
ture, is  a  very  skilful  synthesis  of  mystical,  Platonic, 
and  Aristotelian  elements,  influenced,  of  course,  by  still 
other  traditional  motives.  According  to  this  doctrine, 
the  divine  Essence,  the  Godhead  as  it  is  in  itself,  is 
above  all,  like  the  Hindoo  Atman,  simply  one  and  per- 


VALIDITY  AND  EXPERIENCE  231 

feet;  and  when  we  assert  a  mere  plurality  of  attributes 
in  God,  the  variety  of  these  attributes  is,  as  variety,  due 
to  the  point  of  view,  and  to  our  imperfect  comprehen- 
sion of  the  divine  unity.  One  very  remarkable  apparent 
plurality,  however,  which  our  understanding  finds  in  God, 
is  brought  to  light  by  the  theory  of  the  Divine  Knowl- 
edge, when  viewed  in  relation  to  the  Creative  Will  of 
God.  God  as  Knower,  not  only  knows  all  truth,  but 
he  somehow  knew  in  advance  of  creation,  both  all  things 
to  be  created,  and  all  the  possible  beings  that  he  has 
left  or  will  leave  uncreated.  This  knowledge  of  many 
facts,  viewed  as  a  plurality,  constitutes  for  St.  Thomas 
the  realm  of  the  divine  Ideas.  As  the  divine  ideas,  in 
the  created  world,  receive  discrete  and  individual  em- 
bodiments, it  seems  at  first  natural  to  say  that  God,  by 
various  acts  of  knowledge,  comprehends,  and,  by  various 
acts  of  will,  realizes,  or  leaves  unrealized,  the  beings 
whom  his  wisdom,  in  advance  of  creation,  conceives. 
But  this  way  of  stating  the  case  not  only  would  en- 
danger the  absolute  unity  of  the  divine  essence,  but 
also  would  seem  to  give  the  various  ideas  of  the  pos- 
sible created  beings  a  certain  independence  of  one  an- 
other, and  of  the  divine  essence  itself;  so  that  it  would 
seem  as  if  God  were,  so  to  speak,  forced  to  know  the 
essences  or  natures  of  the  finite  facts,  and  as  if  these 
finite  entities,  even  in  advance  of  creation,  had  their 
own  stubborn  ideal  independence  over  against  God's 
unity.  Hence  arose  the  scholastic  problem  whether  the 
essences  of  created  things,  in  advance  of  creation,  con- 
stituted a  true  term,  or,  as  it  were,  an  eternal  limitation 
of  the  divine  knowledge. 


232    THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

St.  Thomas's  way  of  escaping  this  consequence  in- 
volves a  theory  of  Possible  Being,  as  it  is  in  God,  in 
advance  of  creation.  The  theory  is  to  preserve  the  unity 
of  the  divine  essence,  is  to  explain  the  variety  of  finite 
beings,  and  is  to  show  the  relation  of  the  created  beings 
to  God,  in  such  wise  as  to  avoid  the  apparent  eternity 
and  relative  independence  of  the  essences  of  finite  beings. 

In  advance  of  creation,  any  possible  being  is  known  to 
God,  —  but  how?  God  primarily  and  perfectly  knows 
himself,  and  so  knows  his  own  absolute  fulness  of  being. 
But  this  nature  of  God  is  One  and  Simple.  In  knowing 
this  his  own  nature,  even  in  its  unity,  God  however  views 
this  nature,  by  virtue  of  its  very  fulness  of  Being,  as 
Imitable  now  in  this,  now  in  that  aspect,  —  as  imitable 
in  countless  fashions  and  degrees,  and  thereby  as  imita- 
ble by  various  orders  of  possible  beings  that  God  could 
create.  The  divine  knowledge  of  these  finite  beings 
not  yet  created  primarily  has,  then,  God's  own  nature  as 
its  immediate  object.  God  first  knows  just  himself.  But, 
secondarily,  indeed,  this  nature  can  be  viewed,  not  only 
as  one,  and  as  immediately  present  to  God's  insight,  but 
also,  so  to  speak,  as  rendering  valid  countless  true  possi- 
ble assertions  about  possible  imperfect  imitations  of  the 
Divine  nature.  The  validity  of  these  countless  views  of 
the  one  divine  nature  is  implied,  just  as  a  type  of  genu- 
ine possibility,  in  the  divine  perfection,  and  is  accord- 
ingly said  to  be,  as  it  were,  known  to  the  divine  insight 
in  one  act  with  the  simple  self-knowledge  of  God.  And 
in  this  sense  are  the  created  beings  viewed  as  possible  in 
advance  of  creation.  God  knows  not  these  beings  as 
mere  data  of  his  knowledge,  but  as  truths  valid  only 


VALIDITY  AND  EXPERIENCE  233 

through  his  own  perfection.  After  creation,  these  same 
beings  assume,  with  reference  to  finite  knowledge,  just 
the  independent  type  of  reality  characteristic  of  Realism, 
and  so  the  Thomistic  conception  of  Real  Being  employs, 
it  would  seem,  all  the  three  types  of  reality  so  far  in 
question  in  our  discussion.  God's  reality  as  directly 
viewed  by  himself  is  of  the  mystical  type.  The  created 
world  is  of  the  realistic  type.  The  divine  Ideas  are,  from 
our  point  of  view,  of  the  third  type.  I  need  not  say 
that  St.  Thomas  himself  is  not  to  be  made  responsible  for 
our  definition  of  these  types. 

But  now  at  length  I  pass  to  the  point  in  the  history 
of  philosophy  where  this  our  Third  Conception  of  Real 
Being  assumes  at  last  its  most  explicit  form.  I  refer  to 
a  doctrine  remote  enough  from  that  of  St.  Thomas,  and 
of  direct  interest  for  all  modern  discussions  about  the 
philosophy  either  of  religion  or  of  science.  This  is  the 
doctrine  of  Kant. 

II 

To  speak  of  Kant's  theory  of  what  he  called  the  realm 
of  Possible  Experience,  of  Mogliche  Erfahrung,  is  to  come 
at  once  into  the  full  light  of  the  present,  that  is,  into 
the  midst  of  the  doctrines  that  we  have  inherited  from 
Kant,  and  which  are  current  to-day.  Whoever  wearies 
of  Platonic  or  of  Scholastic  subtleties,  must  recognize,  if 
he  knows  how  to  read  the  meaning  of  current  science, 
that  the  notion  of  Possible  Being,  or  of  Being  whose 
reality  lies  in  its  valididy,  or  in  its  value  as  making  asser- 
tions about  it  true,  is,  as  I  said  at  the  last  time,  the 
favorite  type  of  reality  in  the  writings  of  a  great  number 


234    THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

of  the  recent  philosophical  expositors  of  the  meaning  of 
natural  science.  Such  writers  may  or  may  not  recognize 
their  Kantian  affiliations ;  but  their  position  is  one  whose 
ontology  is  almost  altogether  Kantian,  whatever  may  be 
their  Psychology  or  their  Theory  of  Knowledge.  And 
such  theories  are  so  important  for  the  whole  position  of 
religious  thought,  especially  in  its  relations  to  scientific 
thought,  that  our  future  fortunes  in  this  research  largely 
depend  upon  seeing  how  we  are  related  to  this  charac- 
teristic modern  opinion. 

Kant  was,  by  early  training,  a  realist.  God,  nature, 
the  soul,  are  all  in  his  early  works,  realities  whose  inde- 
pendence of  even  the  truest  and  most  certain  external 
thoughts  about  them  is  for  him  obvious.  As  Kant  grew 
critical,  he  long  pondered  over  the  problems  of  Time 
and  of  Space,  and,  in  1769,  largely  in  consequence  of  the 
discovery  of  what  he  took  to  be  fundamentally  contradic- 
tory characters  in  space  and  in  time,  he  came  to  deny 
that  these  so-called  forms  of  our  experience  can  be  valid 
for  "  Objects  as  they  are  in  themselves."  Later  Kant  be- 
came still  more  critical,  and  questioned  how,  if  the  Nou- 
mena,  or  objects  as  they  are  in  themselves,  are  so  remote 
as  his  new  theory  now  maintained  from  our  empirical 
world  of  time  and  space  phenomena,  those  real  things, 
independent  as  they  are  of  our  understandings,  can  be 
known  to  us  at  all.  The  consequence  of  this  new  doubt, 
and  of  an  interest  in  nevertheless  maintaining  the  genu- 
ine validity  of  the  mathematical  and  empirical  sciences, 
was  the  theory  expounded  in  the  Critique  of  Pure  Reason, 
in  1781. 

In  this  theory,  Kant  comes  definitely  not  only  to  recog- 


, 

VALIDITY  AND  EXPERIENCE  235 

nize,  as  every  one  interested  in  philosophy  knows,  a  two- 
fold  world,  —  a  world  of  "  things  in  themselves  "  on  the 
one  side,  and  of  "  phenomena  "  on  the  other ;  but  also  to 
define  a  very  important  distinction  between  two  sorts  of 
what  he  still  regarded  as  genuinely  objective  reality.  For 
it  is  very  noteworthy  that,  for  Kant,  both  regions  of  his 
twofold  world  are  real.  That  is,  both  the  things  in  them- 
selves, and  the  phenomenal  facts,  are  explicitly  called  by 
him  objective.  Neither  is  a  matter  of  your  private  view 
or  of  mine.  Neither,  so  Kant  directly  says,  is  subjective. 
It  is  wrong  to  suppose  that  Kant  viewed  his  phenomenal 
world  as  a  merely  inner  experience  of  any  one  man.  The 
question  whether  or  no  there  are  inhabitants  in  the  moon 
is,  for  the  Kant  of  the  critical  philosophy,  as  much  a 
question  about  objective  facts  as  it  is  for  any  ordinary 
scientific  observer  of  the  moon.  Yet  this  question  is,  in 
his  opinion,  no  longer  a  question  about  things  in  them- 
selves ;  for  the  moon  is  a  phenomenon  in  space ;  and  the 
unknowable  things  in  themselves  have  no  spatial  charac- 
ters. Precisely  so  the  Newtonian  theory  of  gravitation, 
or  a  problem  about  the  innermost  constitution  of  matter, 
is,  for  the  critical  Kant,  a  discussion  about  real  facts,  but 
not  about  the  things  in  themselves. 

In  brief,  the  former  realist,  Kant,  has  now  come,  not  to 
resign  his  Realism,  but  to  add  thereto  the  definition  of 
another  sort  of  reality.  Besides  his  independent  reals, 
which  he  never  abandons  as  unreal,  but  which  he  now 
regards  as  wholly  unknowable,  he  asserts  as  critical  phi- 
losopher the  objective  character  of  beings  that  are  of  a 
wholly  different  type  from  the  absolutely  independent 
realities. 

p«^*'    nr 


236    THE   FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

And  what  are  these  new  objects?  Kant  tells  us  in  a 
very  explicit  way.  They  are  the  objects  of  Mogliche 
Erfahrung,  of  Possible  Experience.  The  natural  sciences 
are  busy  with  these  objects.  The  latter  do  not  depend 
upon  our  will.  They  are  plainly  independent  of  our 
private  individuality.  But  they  are  dependent  upon  the 
constitution  of  our  experience. 

For  our  experience, — that  is,  Kant's  supposed  dis- 
covery, —  has,  quite  apart  from  any  things  in  themselves, 
own  universal  and  fixed  constitution.  It  is  like  a 
well  bounded  island  in  the  ocean  of  mystery.  The  simile 
is  Kant's.  It  is  like  a  well  ordered  state,  whose  con- 
stitution and  laws  predetermine  those  facts,  such  as  debts 
and  credits,  or  such  as  ranks  and  social  status,  —  those 
facts  of  which  we  earlier  made  mention  in  this  discussion. 
Were  it  not  for  this  universal  constitution  of  our  expe- 
rience, our  momentary  opinions  would  wander  like  the 
nomads  to  whom  Kant  compares  the  sceptics  in  philoso- 
phy. As  it  is,  the  understanding  gives  law  to  nature. 
Universal  assertions  are  valid.  Science  is  possible. 

We  have  no  concern  here  with  the  manner  in  which 
Kant  undertook  to  define  how  experience  won  this,  its 
constitution.  Enough,  the  universality  is  for  him  there. 
And  as  a  result,  if  you  ask  whether  there  are  inhabitants 
in  the  moon,  Kant  holds  that  you  are  not  rightly  inquir- 
ing about  any  sort  of  absolutely  independent  real  beings, 
for  in  science  you  have  no  business  with  realistic  beings 
of  any  sort.  The  things  in  themselves  exist,  but  you  can 
never  win  any  sort  of  idea  about  them.  On  the  other 
hand,  in  thus  questioning,  you  are  indeed  asking  a  per- 
fectly fair  scientific  question,  and  one  in  no  wise  relating 


VALIDITY   AND   EXPERIENCE  237 

to  mere  states  of  your  own  private  mind.  You  are  ask- 
ing, as  Kant  expresses  it,  just  this,  viz.,  whether,  "In  the 
progress  of  possible  experience,  you  would  come  to  per- 
ceive the  presence  of  such  inhabitants?"  An  answer  to 
that  question  is  even  now  true  or  false.  And  the  objects 
of  the  one  boundless  realm  of  possible  experience,  —  a 
realm  which  the  sciences  of  nature  study,  are  real,  pre- 
cisely in  so  far  as  all  such  propositions,  quite  apart  from 
your  present  empirical  observation  or  mine,  but  not 
independently  of  the  predetermined  constitution  of  all 
experience,  are  even  now  true  or  false. 

A  quotation  from  Kant's  discussion  of  the  second  of 
his  so-called  Postulates  of  Empirical  Thought  (Kr.  d.  r. 
V.  2d  edit.,  p.  273)  will  help  to  bring  his  thought  before 
you  in  his  own  way.  "  Perception,"  says  Kant,  "  which 
gives  to  a  concept  its  material  embodiment,  is  the  only 
test  of  actuality.  But  one  can,  nevertheless,  in  advance 
of  the  perception  of  an  object,  and  consequently  in  a 
relatively  a  priori  fashion,  know  the  existence  of  this 
object,  in  case  the  thing  in  question  is  connected  with 
any  of  our  perceptions  according  to  the  principles  of  the 
empirical  synthesis  of  phenomena  (i.e.  according  to  the 
law  of  Causality,  one  of  the  other  fundamental  princi- 
ples). For  then  the  existence  of  the  things  is  linke 
with  our  percepts  in  a  possible  experience,  and  by  virtue 
of  our  general  principles  we  can  pass  from  our  actual 
perception  to  the  thing  in  question  by  a  series  of  possible 
experiences.  Thus  we  may  recognize  the  existence  of  a 
magnetic  substance  pervading  all  matter,  by  virtue  of  our 
perception  of  the  magnetic  attraction  of  iron,  although  an 
immediate  perception  of  the  magnetic  matter  is  impossible 


238    THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

to  us  in  consequence  of  the  constitution  of  our  sense 
organs.  For  in  consequence  of  the  laws  of  sensation, 
and  of  the  context  of  our  perceptions,  we  should  come 
directly  to  observe  the  magnetic  matter,  were  our  organs 
fine  enough.  But  the  form  of  our  possible  experience  has 
no  dependence  upon  the  mere  coarseness  of  our  actual 
sense  organs.  And  thus,  just  so  far  as  perception  and  its 
supplementation  by  virtue  of  empirical  laws  together 
suffice,  so  far  extends  our  knowledge  of  the  existence  of 
things.  But  unless  we  begin  with  actual  experience,  and 
unless  we  proceed  according  to  the  laws  of  the  empirical 
connection  in  experience,  we  vainly  seek  to  guess  or  to 
investigate  the  existence  of  anything." 

So  much,  then,  in  general,  for  Kant's  statement  of 
our  present  conception  of  the  real.  The  novelty  of 
Kant's  account,  as  against  previous  approaches  to  the 
same  philosophical  idea,  lies  in  the  fact  that  earlier 
metaphysic,  in  trying  to  define  the  realm  of  truth  as 
truth,  the  realm  of  the  Possible  Being  of  Aristotle  or 
of  the  Scholastic  Theology,  had  almost  always  made 
this  conception  a  mere  incident  in  the  account  of  a 
world  defined  either  in  realistic  or  in  mystical  terms, 
while  Kant's  region  of  possible  experience  is  sharply 
undered  from  the  realistic  universe,  and  is  quite  as 
clearly  distinguished  from  anything  resembling  that 
mystical  limbo  whose  Schtvarmerei  Kant  himself  so 
much  dreaded. 

Subtle  and  difficult  as  Kant's  new  ontological  concep- 
tion has  been,  it  has  simply  dominated  the  most  popu- 
larly influential  treatments  of  the  philosophy  of  science 
ever  since.  Men  who  have  spoken  lightly  of  Kant  have 


VALIDITY   AND   EXPERIENCE  239 

in  this  respect  followed  his  footsteps.  Mr.  Spencer's  Un- 
knowable is,  on  the  whole,  a  realistic  conception,  although 
sometimes  spoken  of  in  mystical  terms.  But  Mr.  Spen- 
cer's world  of  the  Knowable  has  a  reality  of  the  Kantian 
type.  It  is  a  world  of  valid  empirical  truth.  John 
Stuart  Mill  elaborated  our  Third  Conception  in  his 
famous  chapter  on  the  "  Psychological  Theory  of  Our 
Belief  in  an  External  World,"  in  his  Review  of  Sir 
William  Hamilton's  Philosophy.  His  definition  of  mat- 
ter as  a  permanent  possibility  of  sensation  is  altogether 
of  our  present  type.  Several  of  the  writers  most  promi- 
nent in  the  recent  logical  movement  have  used  what 
is  essentially  this  view  of  the  nature  of  scientific  truth. 
So,  notably,  Wundt,  in  his  discussions  of  the  fundamen- 
tal ideas  of  the  physical  sciences,  for  example,  the  ideas 
of  Substance  and  of  Cause.  In  a  very  different  spirit, 
Avenarius,  while  rejecting  absolute  validity,  reaches  a 
view  of  the  real  which  is  much  of  our  present  sort.1 

Ill 

The  conception  now  in  question,  as  you  see,  is  indeed 
technical  in  its  character;  but  it  has  so  many  bonds  of 
connection  with  popular  thinking  and  with  exact  science,  - 
that,  when  once  defined,  as  our  century  has  learned  to 
define  it,  it  is  sure  to  have  a  great  practical  potency  in 
affairs.  In  earlier  lectures  I  called  the  typical  realists 
the  partisans  of  strict  conservatism,  the  philosophical 
defenders  of  the  extreme  Right  of  any  social  order. 

1  The  Seine  Erfahrung  of  Avenarius  constantly  strives  to  become 
something  merely  Immediate,  but  in  vain,  just  because  Avenarius  is  no 
mystic. 


240    THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

The  disciples  of  the  new  definition  I  have  already 
called,  as  they  appear  at  the  present  day,  Critical 
Rationalists.  As  a  fact,  they  are  critical  rather  than 
dogmatic,  but  they  are  rather  seldom  of  the  extreme 
Left.  Very  often  they  belong  to  what  one  might  ven- 
ture to  call  the  left  centre  of  the  parliament  of  thought, 
—  to  the  moderate  Liberals  of  doctrinal  discussion,  al- 
though the  converse  of  this  proposition  does  not  hold 
true.  For  there  are  moderate  liberals  who  are  either 
mystics  or  constructive  idealists. 

The  characteristics  of  the  ontology  of  our  critical 
rationalists  can  now  easily  be  summed  up.  The  Real 
for  the  metaphysical  Realist,  in  case  he  attempts  to  be 
thoroughgoing,  has  to  be,  if  anything,  the  Independent 
Individual,  for,  since  it  is  beyond  all  our  ideal  determina- 
tions, it  has  to  be  in  itself  absolutely  determinate.  That 
the  controversy  of  Aristotle  with  Plato  proved.  The  Pla- 
tonic Ideas,  as  universals,  early  perished  from  among 
the  entities  of  the  realistic  world,  to  transmigrate,  as  it 
were,  to  this  new  realm,  or  also  to  reappear,  with  their 
own  immortal  vitality,  in  that  realm  of  genuine  Idealism 
which  we  shall  later  explore.  The  One  Being  of  the 
mystic  is  as  One,  an  Individual,  although,  as  the  in- 
*effable  goal  of  all  desire,  it  enjoys  all  the  advantages 
of  a  Universal,  and  is  indifferent  to  all  our  distinctions. 
But  the  present,  the  Third  Conception  of  Being,  has 
amongst  all  the  four  conceptions  the  unique  character 
that  it  alone,  so  far  as  it  has  more  fully  come  to 
understand  itself,  consciously  attempts  to  define  the 
Real  as  explicitly  and  only  the  Universal. 
Those  who  have  imagined  that  the  controversy  about  the 


VALIDITY  AND  EXPERIENCE  241 

reality  corresponding  to  our  general  ideas  and  about  the 
universal  and  the  individual  (the  controversy  of  Nominal- 
ist and  of  the  unhappily  so-called  Realist),  is  a  wholly 
antiquated  mediaeval  absurdity,  have  curiously  failed  to 
observe  the  signs  of  our  own  times,  and  the  trend  of 
this  characteristic  ontology  of  our  present  century  and 
of  current  science.  What  are  Mill's  Permanent  Possi- 
bilities of  Sensation,  if  you  view  them  as  objectively 
valid  at  all,  and  not  as  mere  private  expectations  of 
our  present  feeling,  —  what  are  they,  I  ask,  but  ex- 
plicit universals?  What  sort  of  an  individual  fact  or 
being  is  a  mere  "  possibility  "  ?  Kant's  empirical  objects, 
or  G-egenstande  der  Moglichen  Erfahrung,  —  his  sub- 
stances, causes,  and  the  rest,  what  are  they  but  prod- 
ucts of  the  categorizing  Understanding,  empirically 
valid  general  truths?  If  one  passes  from  the  more 
abstract  formulas  to  the  concrete  cases,  glance,  if  you 
please,  at  that  most  potent  conception,  the  modern 
notion  of  Energy.  I  ask  not  here  as  to  its  empirical 
basis  nor  as  to  its  outcome,  but  solely  as  to  its  ontologi- 
cal  character  as  a  mere  conception.  Energy,  one  may 
say,  is  indeed  phenomenally  real.  Professor  Tait's  re- 
markable words  as  to  the  objective  reality  implied  by 
the  permanence  of  Energy  have  often  been  quoted. 
But  nobody  of  any  authority,  I  suppose,  is  yet  pre- 
pared to  maintain  in  any  decisive  way  that  the  energy 
of  the  physical  world  consists  of  a  collection  of  ulti- 
mate individual  units  or  bits  of  energy,  which  retain 
their  individual  identity,  and  as  individuals  transfer 
themselves  from  one  part  of  matter  to  another.  The 
idea  has  been  suggested,  but  so  far  not  vindicated.  In 

K 


242    THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

whatever  sense  energy  is  real,  in  that  same  sense  an 
unindividuated  entity,  whose  very  essence  is  universal, 
is  real.  In  vain  then  does  one  merely  scoff  at  the  early 
mediaeval  fashion  of  speaking  of  universal  principles  as 
if  they  were  real.  In  a  new  sense,  to  be  sure,  and  for 
new  reasons,  the  ontology  of  the  moment,  in  the  con- 
crete form  of  the  sciences,  is  constantly  recognizing,  as 
in  one  sense  real,  objects  which,  as  they  are  defined, 
are  universals,  and  which  cannot  be  individuals  with- 
out altering  their  definition. 

The  grounds  of  this  modern  recognition  of  the  new 
universals  cannot  indeed  be  judged  upon  the  older  scho- 
lastic bases.  One  cannot  be  fair  to  these  newer  concepts 
without  recognizing  the  changed  situation  that  has  re- 
sulted from  Kant's  labors,  and  from  the  prominence  now 
given  in  thought  to  the  conception  of  Validity  as  a  basis 
for  the  interpretation  of  our  Experience.  I  mention  the 
issue  only  to  show,  by  a  comparison  of  various  problems, 
in  what  world  we  ourselves,  at  this  stage  of  our  study, 
are  moving. 

The  Real  in  this  sense  is  furthermore,  as  we  have  all 
along  seen,  identical  with  the  determinately  Possible  only 
in  so  far  as  by  that  term  you  mean  not  indeed  the  fan- 
tastically or  provisionally  possible,  such  as  a  golden 
mountain,  but  that  which  would  be  observed  or  verified 
under  exactly  stateable,  even  if  physically  inaccessible, 
conditions.  At  the  outset  of  an  inquiry,  you  to  be  sure 
define  as  possible  much  that  you  later  find  to  be  unreal. 
Yet  so  far  you  have  only  the  provisionally  possible.  But, 
for  instance,  the  liquid  or  solid  state  of  the  interior  of 
the  earth,  or  the  liquefaction  of  air,  or  the  melting  of 


VALIDITY  AND  EXPERIENCE  243 

snow,  is  a  possible  experience,  when  you  have  once  proved 
that  possibility  in  no  provisional  sense.  For  such  possi- 
bilities, once  recognized,  are  viewed  as  really  valid  and 
objective  physical  characters  of  air  or  of  snow  or  of  the 
earth.  And  now,  finally,  you  may  once  more  see  what 
we  summarized  at  the  outset,  namely,  how  this  concep- 
tion must  on  the  whole  stand  related  to  theology  and  to 
religion. 

The  partisans  of  our  third  notion  of  the  real  have,  in- 
deed, as  we  have  observed,  a  stately  tradition  behind  them. 
They  can  well  assert  that  they  are  not  mere  sceptics  or 
destroyers  of  faith.  Yet  a  theology  that  has  been  deeply 
influenced  by  this  conception  will  no  longer  share  the 
realist's  absolute  dogmatic  assurance,  whether  positive 
or  negative,  nor  yet  the  mystic's  inexpressible  commun- 
ion with  his  ineffable  and  immediate  truth.  Our  critical 
rationalist  lives  in  a  world  where  nothing  in  the  realistic 
sense  is  real,  but  where  it  is  as  if  there  were  independent 
realities,  which,  when  more  closely  examined,  prove  to 
be  merely  more  or  less  valid  and  permanent  ideas.  The 
truth,  whether  transient  or  eternal,  always  arouses  in 
such  a  world  a  twofold  response  or  reaction  in  us  who 
observe  it.  It  imposes  its  presence  upon  us  as  if  it  were 
an  independent  reality;  and  hereupon  we  submit.  But 
then  it  alters  its  countenance  as  we  consider  it  critically, 
and  becomes  more  and  more  like  a  mere  product  of  our 
point  of  view,  a  mere  creation  of  our  experience  and  our 
thought.  And  hereupon  we  wonder.  This  truth  seems 
to  be  at  first  an  individual  fact.  But  it  transforms  itself 
as  we  watch  it  into  an  universal  principle.  After  we 
have  watched  such  changes  awhile,  we  begin  to  ques- 


244     THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

tion  whether  this  whole  conception  is  at  all  capable  of 
finality.  The  truth  is,  indeed,  valid ;  but  is  it  only  valid  ? 
The  forms  are  eternal ;  but  are  they  only  forms  ?  The 
universal  principles  are  true ;  but  are  they  only  uni- 
versal ?  The  moral  order  of  the  world  seems  genuine ; 
but  is  it  only  an  order?  Is  God  identical  with  the  world 
of  Forms? 

These  questions  arise  in  all  sorts  of  ways  in  our  age. 
They  remind  us  that  our  problem  is  here  once  more  a 
problem  about  the  meaning  and  the  place  of  individuality 
in  the  system  of  Being,  and  about  the  relation  of  indi- 
vidual and  universal  in  our  conceptions. 

IV 

And  now,  upon  what  basis  shall  we  judge  the  concep- 
tion at  present  before  us?  In  one  sense  it  appears  to  be 
peculiarly  fortified  against  attack.  Unlike  Realism,  it  is 
from  the  beginning  an  essentially  reflective  and  critical 
conception  of  Being.  It  attributes  reality  to  objects  only 
at  the  very  moment  of  recognizing,  as  in  some  sense  real, 
the  ideas  that  relate  to  these  objects.  And,  unlike  Mysti- 
cism, it  recognizes  that  to  lose  sight  of  the  value  and 
positive  meaning  of  finite  ideas,  is  to  render  naught  the 
very  objects  which  the  ideas  seek.  It  observes  that  when 
you  declare  any  object  to  be  real,  you  are  in  possession 
of  an  idea,  however  exact,  or  however  inexact,  however 
transient  and  relative,  or  however  universal  and  eternal, 
—  an  idea  to  which  you  attribute  an  essentially  teleo- 
logical  significance ;  since  you  assert  that  this  idea  is 
true,  is  valid,  or  in  other  words,  is  adapted  to  its  ideal 
end.  Our  present  conception  regards  this  adaptation  of 


VALIDITY  AND  EXPERIENCE  245 

the  idea  to  its  own  end  as  the  primary  topic  of  any  onto- 
logical  assertion,  and  as  the  object  which  any  one  who 
asserts  Being  first  of  all  inevitably  means.  And  in  mak- 
ing this  comment  upon  our  universal  human  relation  to 
truth,  the  present  conception  of  Being  is  indeed  insist- 
ing upon  perfectly  obvious  and  empirical  facts. 

When  the  realist  says,  "  The  world  is  first  of  all  inde- 
pendently real,  whether  or  no  ideas  refer  to  it,  and  it  only 
becomes  secondarily  and  per  accidens  the  object  of  ideas," 
the  realist,  in  his  whole  view  of  the  nature  of  Being,  begins 
by  abandoning  the  realm  of  experience.  He  can  there- 
fore never  empirically  verify  for  you  his  independent 
Beings.  He  can  only  presuppose  them.  You  ask  him  to 
show  you  an  Independent  Being.  He  points  at  the  table 
or  at  the  stars.  But  those,  for  you,  and  for  him  alike, 
are  empirical  objects,  bound  up  in  the  context  of  experi- 
ence. Nor  could  any  possible  enlargement  of  experience 
ever  show  anybody  a  Being  wholly  independent.  The 
only  way  to  judge  Realism,  since  experience  is  thus  aban- 
doned by  the  realist,  is  to  examine  the  inner  consistency 
or  inconsistency  of  realistic  doctrine.  And  we  have  seen 
that  Realism  is  wholly  inconsistent.  But  our  present 
conception  begins  by  observing  that  an  experience  of 
facts  which  send  you  beyond  themselves,  and  to  further 
possible  experience,  for  their  interpretation,  is  the  only 
conscious  basis  for  any  assertion  of  a  Being  that  is  be- 
yond the  flying  contents  of  this  very  instant.  The  Third 
Conception  of  Being  refuses  to  ignore  this  conscious,  this 
empirical  element,  present  wherever  the  assertion  of 
Being  is  made ;  for  the  only  possible  warrant  for  any  on- 
tological  assertion  must  be  found  in  this  element.  What 


246    THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

is,  fulfils  the  meaning  of  the  empirically  present  idea  that 
refers  to  the  Being  in  question,  and  except  as  fulfilling 
such  a  meaning,  Being  can  be  neither  conceived,  nor  as- 
serted, nor  verified.  In  recognizing  this  fact  of  experi- 
ence, lies  the  strength  of  the  Third  Conception. 

In  consequence  of  this  reflective  considerateness  so 
characteristic  of  our  Third  Conception,  it  frequently  ap- 
pears, in  its  history,  as  the  immediate  outcome  of  a 
polemic  against  Realism.  Thus,  the  negative  arguments 
of  Berkeley  derive  their  force  from  a  well-known  series 
of  comments  upon  the  nature  of  the  experiences  by 
which  we  become  acquainted  with  Being.  The  primary 
and  secondary  qualities  attributed  by  many  realists  to 
matter,  Berkeley  analyzes  into  mere  complexes  of  imme- 
diate data  and  of  ideal  construction.  He  then  asks  the 
realist  the  question :  — "  What  do  you  mean,  then,  by 
your  independently  existing  world?"  And  Berkeley 
thereupon  shows  how,  primarily,  all  that  Realism  con- 
sistently means  by  matter  has  to  be  expressed  in  the 
form  of  an  assertion  that  certain  empirical  ideas  of  ours 
are  valid,  and  that  their  validity  is  a  matter  of  possible 
experience.  The  distant  church-tower,  for  instance,  is  a 
hint  to  the  sense  of  vision  of  a  long  series  of  possible 
experiences.  The  assertion  that  these  experiences,  of 
approach  to  the  church,  of  touch,  of  entrance  to  the 
church,  are  conditionally  possible  for  any  human  being, 
this  assertion  is  valid.  And  herein  lies,  for  Berkeley,  the 
primary  reality  of  the  material  world.  In  order  to  ex- 
plain still  more  exhaustively  the  validity  in  question, 
Berkeley  is  indeed  led  to  his  well-known  hypotheses  as 
to  the  souls,  and  as  to  the  direct  influence  of  the  Divine 


VALIDITY  AND  EXPERIENCE  247 

Will ;  and  these  hypotheses,  as  Berkeley  states  them,  are 
once  more  essentially  realistic  in  their  type,  since  the 
God  of  Berkeley  appears,  in  his  relation  to  our  valid 
experience  of  the  natural  order,  as  an  independently  real 
creative  power,  and  since  the  souls,  also,  in  Berkeley's 
account,  get  a  distinctly  realistic  sort  of  Being.  But 
his  realistic  type  of  theology  is  the  halting  and  incon- 
sequent side  of  Berkeley's  doctrine.  His  critical  study 
of  the  conception  of  matter  is  a  contribution  to  the 
historical  development  of  our  Third  Conception  of  what 
it  is  to  be.  In  a  similar  way,  our  Third  Conception  ap- 
pears in  Kant  himself,  as  the  result  of  an  attack  upon 
every  realistic  interpretation  of  the  world  of  common 
sense  and  of  physical  science,  and  as  a  development  of 
the  thesis:  Nur  in  der  Erfahrung  ist  Wahrheit ;  only 
Experience  furnishes  the  ground  for  truth. 

And  in  fact,  if  viewed  merely  as  a  negative  criticism 
of  the  realistic  conception,  the  argument  for  the  Third 
Conception  has  often  been  stated,  in  the  history  of  re- 
cent philosophy,  in  an  unanswerable  form.  How,  in  fact, 
shall  you  maintain  that  Reality  is  independent  of  ideas 
which  refer  to  it,  while  at  the  same  time  these  ideas 
are  other  than  itself,  —  how  shall  you  maintain  this, 
when  the  least  reflection  shows  you  that  you  are  using 
ideas  at  every  step  of  your  discussion  of  reality,  and 
that  whatever  you  assert  of  the  reality,  you  can  give 
warrant  to  the  assertion  only  by  first  showing  reason 
for  regarding  your  ideas  as  valid  ?  Suppose,  for  instance, 
that  you  say,  as  realists  have  often  said:  —  "Some  in- 
dependent cause  for  ideas  must  be  assumed.  This  inde- 
pendent cause  has  Being.  And  its  being  is  therefore 


248    THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

the  same  as  its  independence  as  a  cause."  What  is  this 
assertion  except  an  insistence  that  a  certain  more  or 
less  well-known  empirical  relation,  already  regarded  as 
valid  within  your  realm  of  experience,  namely  the  rela- 
tion called  causality,  has  validity  beyond  your  present 
range  of  experience?  And  what  is  this  again  but 
merely  saying  that  if  your  senses  were  improved,  if 
your  horizon  were  widened,  you  would  then  directly 
observe  how  the  so-called  external  facts,  which  would 
then  be  merely  contents  of  your  enlarged  experience, 
would  appear  as  empirical  causes  of  what  you  had 
formerly  called  your  ideas.  Thus  restated,  however, 
your  Realism  turns  at  once  into  what  Kant  called  a 
judgment  about  the  texture  of  Mogliche  Erfahrung. 
Whatever,  then,  you  may  attempt  to  assert,  all  that  your 
Realism  will  ever  succeed  in  articulating,  is  your  belief 
that  experience  as  a  whole,  that  realm  of  truth  of  which 
you  regard  your  present  experience  as  a  case  and  as  a 
fragment,  has  a  certain  valid  constitution.  What  Kant 
says  remains  then  so  far  the  whole  outcome  of  the  criti- 
cal study  of  Being.  You  speak  of  objects,  indeed,  and 
these  are  not  the  objects  of  this  instant's  experience. 
But  they  are  also  not  objects  merely  independent  of 
the  ideas  that  refer  to  them.  For  your  assertion 
that  the  world  is,  involves  a  judgment  that  your  pres- 
ent experience  is  interwoven  in  the  whole  context  of 
the  realm  of  valid  or  of  possible  experience.  This  con- 
text, however,  is  not  independent  of  its  own  fragments. 
Your  ideas  are  recognized  by  the  whole  that  they  with 
validity  define. 

And  if  you  attempt  to  assert  the  Being  of  things  in 


VALIDITY  AND  EXPERIENCE  249 

any  more  independent  sense  than  this,  you  struggle  in 
vain  to  articulate  your  meaning.  You  can  then  only 
take  refuge  in  the  dogmatism  of  the  typical  realist. 
You  can,  to  be  sure,  call  your  Realism  a  "  fundamen- 
tal conviction,"  or  a  "wholesome  faith,"  or  a  "truth 
that  no  man  in  his  sane  senses  can  doubt."  But  the 
strange  consequence  which  then  besets  your  very  dog- 
matism lies  in  the  fact  that  even  in  repeating  these 
confident  speeches,  you  have  merely  asserted  that,  in 
your  opinion,  certain  ideas  now  present  to  you  are 
valid  ideas.  You  have  employed,  then,  and  have  ad- 
mitted as  the  ultimate  standard,  your  opponent's  con- 
ception of  Being,  even  in  the  very  act  of  refuting  his 
view.  You  have  appealed  to  the  enemy's  theory  as 
your  sole  warrant  for  asserting  your  own.  Or  perhaps 
you  may  choose,  as  in  an  earlier  lecture  we  found 
Realism  doing,  —  you  may  choose  to  call  your  oppo- 
nent's view  mere  "  insanity,"  and  to  hurl  pathological 
epithets  at  all  who  doubt  Realism.  The  device  is  easy. 
But  this  procedure  once  more  is  an  express  appeal  to 
your  adversary's  own  conception  of  Being  as  the  stand- 
ard by  which  you  are  to  be  judged.  For  the  very  con- 
ception of  insanity  is  an  empirical  conception,  and  all 
that  your  assertion  means,  comes  to  an  expression  of 
opinion  that  metaphysical  views,  other  than  realistic 
ones,  when  seriously  entertained,  psychologically  tend 
to  the  possible  experiences  now  called  insanity.  What 
you  have  said  is  then  still  nothing  but  that,  in  your 
opinion,  the  realm  of  Mogliche  Erfahrung  has  for  men 
a  certain  constitution,  and  that  your  idea  of  this  con- 
stitution appears  to  you  valid.  In  vain  is  all  your 


250    THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

Realism.  Your  very  speech  is  in  your  adversary's 
tongue.  You  come  to  curse  his  views.  Your  words 
are  blessings.  You  are  among  your  opponent's  proph- 
ets. For  you  appeal  to  his  standards  as  your  own. 

An  awakened  realist,  then,  can  readily  see,  if  he 
chooses,  that  his  Realism  can  get  no  coherent  expres- 
sion without  becoming  at  once  transformed  into  the 
very  formulas  of  this  our  present  and  Third  Conception 
of  Being.  In  the  third  lecture  of  this  course,  to  be 
sure,  I  made  no  attempt  to  express  in  this  present 
form  the  criticism  there  undertaken  of  the  conception 
of  the  Independent  Beings.  I  deliberately  refrained 
from  that  course  in  that  place,  because,  as  I  ventured 
to  say,  Realism  needs  no  such  external  refutation. 
Merely  left  to  itself,  it  rends  its  own  world  to  frag- 
ments in  the  very  act  of  creating  that  world.  I  there- 
fore preferred  to  let  Realism  first  judge  itself.  We 
explored  its  empire  under  its  own  guidance,  and  found 
absolutely  Nothing  there.  But  the  reason  why  the  In- 
dependent Beings  proved  to  be  nothing  whatever,  now 
at  last  explicitly  appears.  It  was  because  Realism,  in 
defining  Being,  was  actually  only  defining  either  Kant's 
realm  of  Mogliche  Erfahrung,  or  else  indeed  Nothing 
at  all.  As  the  realm  of  the  Third  Conception  was  not 
yet  in  sight,  the  realist  had  only  the  latter  alternative. 
The  Being  of  the  third  type  is  however  distinctly  not 
an  Independent  Being.  It  is  objective,  but  not  iso- 
lated from  the  realm  of  ideas. 

Thus  well  fortified  against  attack  is  our  Third  Con- 
ception of  Being.  In  fact,  how  could  one  attack  it 
except  by  undertaking  to  show  that  it  is  invalid?  And 


VALIDITY  AND  EXPERIENCE  251 

how  could  one  undertake  that  task  except  by  first  ad- 
mitting that  Being  essentially  implies  the  validity  of 
ideas?  This  reflection  is  conclusive  indeed  against  a 
realist,  whose  Independent  Being  was  first  to  be  real 
whether  or  no  any  ideas  were  to  be  found  in  the  uni- 
verse, and  consequently  whether  or  no  validity,  which 
is  essentially  bound  up  with  the  Being  of  ideas,  united 
reality  and  idea  in  one  context.  But  this  reflection 
still  leaves  open  one  line  of  possible  criticism  which 
may  be  applied  to  our  Third  Conception.  Validity  or 
truth  may  be,  as  the  Scholastic  philosophy  also  would 
have  said,  an  essential  aspect  of  true  Being,  without 
on  that  account  furnishing  the  final  definition  of  what 
constitutes  the  whole  Being  of  things.  And  here  is  it 
indeed  a  fair  matter  for  question.  That  the  Third  Con- 
ception, as  far  as  it  goes,  has  some  degree  of  validity, 
is  indeed  obvious  enough.  But  is  it  adequate  and 
final?  Can  the  realm  of  validity  remain  merely  a  realm 
of  validity?  Here  is  indeed  the  place  where  we  begin 
the  final  stage  of  our  journey  towards  an  adequate  view 
of  the  meaning  of  the  ontological  predicate. 

We  have  now  several  times  insisted  upon  the  empiri- 
cal basis  which  the  Third  Conception  of  Being,  as  we 
have  said,  inevitably  presupposes.  But  one  may  here 
object  to  our  account  that,  although  in  many  cases  our 
Third  Conception  rests  its  assertion  that  a  given  idea  is 
valid  upon  an  obviously  empirical  foundation,  this  is 
not  always,  nor  even  ever  altogether  the  case.  For  the 
mathematician,  as  we  ourselves  saw,  deals  with  a  world 
far  transcending  our  actual  physical  powers  of  empiri- 
cal verification.  And  it  is  not  uncommon  to  suppose 


252    THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

that  the  very  bases  of  mathematical  science  are  certain 
ultimate  necessities  of  thought,  for  which  no  empirical 
warrant  can  be  given.  The  world  of  validity  also  often 
appears  as  a  world  containing  an  essentially  eternal 
truth.  But,  as  it  may  now  be  asked,  does  our  experi- 
ence, as  such,  ever  compass  eternity?  Moreover,  one 
who  asserts  the  objective  validity  of  an  idea,  even  in 
a  merely  temporal  sense,  transcends  by  his  very  asser- 
tion the  circle  of  his  present  experience.  In  brief, 
every  form  of  Critical  Rationalism  involves  a  confi- 
dence in  a  reasoning  process.  But  is  reasoning  iden- 
tical with  experience? 

These  considerations  may  serve  to  introduce  a  still 
further  reflection  upon  the  deeper  meaning  of  our  Third 
Conception.  As  a  fact,  it  is  far  too  easy  to  talk  of 
validity  without  analyzing  its  foundation.  But  if  you 
thus  analyze,  you  are  led  to  a  view  of  the  nature  of 
ideas,  and  of  the  reasoning  process,  which  indeed  shows 
that  our  very  conception  of  validity  needs  a  further 
supplement  before  it  can  be  accepted  as  at  once  con- 
sistent, and  adequate  to  its  own  undertaking. 

The  theory  of  reasoning  has  received,  in  recent  logi- 
cal and  scientific  thought,  an  extensive  reexamination, 
which  students  of  metaphysics  can  no  longer  ignore. 
Nowhere  has  this  theory  been  more  carefully  revised 
than  in  the  history  of  modern  elementary  mathematics. 
A  frequent  experience  of  inconsistencies  and  of  apparent 
paradoxes,  due  to  extremely  subtle  errors  in  exact 
method,  has  led  mathematicians,  within  the  past  fifty 
years,  to  a  thoroughgoing  attempt  at  a  review  of  the 
very  bases  of  Arithmetic,  of  Geometry,  and  of  Analysis. 


VALIDITY  AND  EXPERIENCE  253 

The  modern  study  of  the  Algebra  of  Logic,  founded  by 
Boole,  and  continued  by  Jevons,  by  Mr.  Venn,  and  by 
still  others  in  Great  Britain,  by  Mr.  Charles  Peirce  in 
America,  and  by  Schroeder  in  Germany,  has  also  con- 
tributed to  set  the  whole  theory  of  exact  reasoning  in 
a  light  at  once  clearer  than  that  of  old,  and  of  a  nature 
to  reveal  new  problems.  No  longer  can  you  venture, 
in  the  exact  sciences,  to  make  your  appeal  to  dogmati- 
cally asserted  "  ultimate  necessities "  of  reason.  The 
mathematician  is  no  longer  fond  of  mere  axioms.  And 
despite  what  we  have  just  said  about  the  way  in  which 
the  mathematician  seems  to  transcend  our  present  form 
of  experience,  a  closer  study  shows  that  it  is  still  our 
very  experience  itself  that  is  the  mathematician's  only 
guide  to  concrete  results.  Experience  is  made  better 
by  no  mean,  but  experience  makes  that  mean.  For  in 
modern  mathematical  study,  even  when  you  deal  with 
irrational  numbers,  like  TT,  and  estimate  their  properties 
with  an  exactness  that  no  physical  experience  of  ours 
can  hope  to  follow,  —  yes,  even  if  you  take  the  wings 
of  the  Calculus,  or  of  the  Theory  of  Functions,  and  fly 
unto  the  uttermost  parts  of  the  realm  of  the  quantita- 
tive infinite,  even  there,  in  an  unexpected,  but  not  the 
less  compelling  sense,  actual  experience  guides  you,  pre- 
sented facts  sustain  you. 

For,  strangely  enough,  the  logical  outcome  of  this 
whole  recent  review  of  the  bases  of  mathematical  science 
can  be  expressed  by  saying  that  the  modern  mathemati- 
cian rightly  doubts  every  attempt  to  prove  any  proposi- 
tion in  his  science  unless,  in  trying  to  prove,  you  can 
first  empirically  show  him,  in  a  fashion  that  he  can  ac- 


254    THE  FOUR   HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF   BEING 

cept,  the  actual  process  of  construction  belonging  to,  or 
creative  of,  the  ideal  object  of  which  your  proposition 
undertakes  to  give  an  account.  Construction  actually 
shown  is,  then,  the  test.  This  actual  construction  must 
be  also  not  only  shown,  but  carefully  surveyed  in  pres- 
ent experience,  before  your  proof  can  be  estimated. 
The  object  of  which  you  speak  may  be,  like  TT,  or  like 
the  total  collection  of  all  possible  rational  numbers,  or 
like  the  quantitative  infinite  in  any  form,  an  object  that 
nobody  amongst  us  men  directly  observes.  But,  never- 
theless, the  fashion  of  its  construction,  the  type  to  which 
it  conforms,  the  law  of  its  nature,  the  receipt  for  manu- 
facturing this  object,  must  be  capable  of  adequate  pres- 
entation in  the  inner  experience  of  the  mathematician, 
if  any  exact  result  is  to  be  obtained.  And  as  thus  pre- 
sented, the  basis  of  the  mathematician's  reasoning  be- 
comes so  far  the  study  of  inner  experience.  The  object 
with  which  he  directly  deals  is  a  thing  present,  seen, 
given,  tested.  As  our  American  logician,  Mr.  Charles 
Peirce  has  well  said,  exact  reasoning  is  a  process  of  ex- 
periment performed  upon  an  artificial  object,  an  object 
made  indeed  by  the  mathematician,  but  observed  by 
him  just  as  truly  as  a  star  or  as  a  physiological  process 
is  observed  by  the  student  of  another  science,  experi- 
mented upon  just  as  truly  as  one  experiments  in  a 
laboratory.1  But  the  marvel  is  that  the  present  experi- 
ence of  the  mathematician  with  his  ideal  object  some- 
how warrants  him  in  making  assertions  about  an  infinity 

1  A  similar  view  of  the  nature  of  the  reasoning  process  is  illustrated  in 
the  remarkable  discussions  that  fill  part  of  Mr.  Bradley 's  Principles  of 
Logic. 


VALIDITY   AND   EXPERIENCE  255 

of  equally  ideal  objects  which   are  not  present   to   him, 
and  which  never  will  be  present  to  any  human  being. 

To  illustrate,  —  suppose  that  a  mathematician  wants 
to  prove  something  about  the  value  of  TT,  or  about  the 
universal  laws  of  Arithmetic,  or  about  the  properties  of 
a  continuous  function,  or  about  the  sum  of  an  infinite 
series,  or  about  the  mathematical  relationships  of  two 
infinite  collections  of  ideal  objects.  What  he  is  con- 
cerned to  demonstrate,  lies  in  the  realm  of  the  infinite, 
and  of  the  eternally  valid.  And  our  direct  experience 
gives  us  only  the  passing  data  and  the  fragmentary 
ideas  of  the  moment.  Does  the  mathematician  then, 
like  the  rationalistic  metaphysician  of  old,  hereupon 
merely  appeal  to  so-called  first  and  fundamental  prin- 
ciples? Does  he  write  down  axioms,  and  merely  defy 
you  to  deny  them?  Does  he  assert  a  priori  that  this 
or  that  cannot  or  shall  not  be  questioned?  No,  the 
modern  mathematician  has  no  dogmas.  He  waits  for 
his  facts.  He  asks  you  to  construct,  and  then  to  ob- 
serve these  facts  with  him.  What  he  does  is  to  build 
up  before  your  eyes  something,  as  Mr.  Peirce  well  says, 
that  either  is  a  diagram  or  else  resembles  one,  —  a  col- 
lection of  observable  symbols,  or  of  figures  in  space, 
arranged  in  a  certain  deliberately  planned  way.  In  brief, 
he  shows  you  empirically  present  inner  constructions. 
He  builds  up  these  artificial  objects  before  your  eyes,  and 
then  he  experiments  upon  them,  and  asks  you  to  watch 
the  result  of  the  experiment.  This  result  he  first  reads  off, 
with  as  much  the  sense  that  he  is  recording  present  facts 
of  observation,  as  one  would  have  who  should  observe,  on 
the  street,  that  yonder  horse  is  in  front  of  yonder  cart. 


256    THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

The  difference  so  far  is  merely  that  the  mathe- 
matician makes  his  empirical  objects,  and  does  not 
wait  to  see  if  ordinary  natural  processes  will  furnish 
them  to  him.  His  world,  therefore,  seems  at  first  quite 
plastic.  It  is,  as  we  have  said,  his  fairyland.  He 
plays  with  it.  Yet  none  the  less,  as  he  plays,  he  ob- 
serves the  empirical  results  of  his  play.  And  while  he 
does  this,  he  is  as  much  a  student  of  given  facts  as  is 
a  chemist  or  a  business  man.  The  results  of  this  ob- 
servation are  often  unexpected.  And  once  seen  (just 
here  lies  the  mystery  of  the  realm  of  validity),  —  once 
seen,  they  are  also  seen  to  stand  for  unalterable  truth. 
How  this  can  be,  is  precisely  our  present  problem.  The 
mathematician,  in  his  own  exact  way,  is  thus  like  Brown- 
ing's lover.  His  instant  is  an  eternity.  He  sees  in  a 
transient  moment.  Every  one  of  his  glimpses  of  fact 
is  like  the  flash  of  the  moonlight  on  the  water.  Yet 
what  he  sees  outlasts  the  ages  of  ages.  But  nothing 
in  all  this  eternal  validity  of  his  outcome  makes  him 
less  empirical  in  his  actual  scrutiny.  The  validity  is 
to  be  eternal.  But  his  form  of  his  experience  is  pre- 
cisely that  of  any  other  human  creature  of  the  instant's 
flight.  In  examining  his  diagram,  he  is  as  faithful  a 
watcher  as  the  astronomer  alone  with  his  star.  The 
mathematician  has  made  his  diagram,  but  he  cannot 
wilfully  alter  its  consequences.  And  they  must  first 
be  seen.  Then  alone  can  they  be  believed.  Here  is 
the  strange  antithesis  between  the  empirical  form  and 
the  eternal  content  of  the  realm  of  mathematical  validity. 

The  valid,  then,  even  the  eternally  valid,  enters  our 
human  consciousness  through  the  narrow  portals  of  the 


VALIDITY  AND  EXPERIENCE  257 

instant's  experience.  Reasoning  is  an  empirical  process, 
whatever  else  it  also  is.  One  who  observes  the  nature 
of  a  realm  of  abstractly  possible  experience,  does  so  by 
reading  off  the  structure  of  a  presented  experience. 
Necessity  comes  home  to  us  men  through  the  medium 
of  a  given  fact.  This  is  the  general  result  of  modern 
exact  Logic.  This  is  the  outcome  of  the  recent  study 
of  the  bases  of  mathematical  science. 

And  now,  in  a  precisely  similar  way,  the  discovery 
of  the  more  contingent,  or,  on  occasion,  of  the  more 
transient  validity  of  the  non-mathematical  truths  of  the 
world  of  possible  experience,  has  the  same  puzzling  and 
twofold  character.  You  examine,  in  the  field  or  in  the 
laboratory,  a  law  of  the  physical  world ;  you  assure 
yourself  that  yonder  ship  observed  out  at  sea  is  a 
reality;  you  find  out  the  price  of  a  commodity;  you 
verify  the  credit  of  a  business  man.  In  any  such  case, 
what  do  you  accomplish?  What  sort  of  Being  do  you 
assert,  examine,  establish?  The  answer  is,  —  What  you 
do  is  to  test  the  validity  of  an  idea  about  possible  ex- 
perience. You  first  predict  that  if  you  act  so  or  so, 
if  you  watch  the  ship  longer,  if  you  make  the  scien- 
tific experiment  under  given  conditions,  if  you  offer  the 
market  price  for  the  article,  or  if  you  attempt  to  nego- 
tiate the  commercial  paper,  certain  empirical  results  will 
follow,  certain  consequences  will  be  experienced  by  you. 
This  prediction  is,  for  you,  merely  an  assertion  about 
possible  perceptions,  feelings,  ideas.  You  will,  under 
given  conditions,  see  certain  sights,  hear  certain  words, 
touch  certain  tangible  objects,  —  in  brief,  get  the  pres- 
ence of  certain  empirical  facts.  This  is  all  that  you 


258    THE   FOUR  HISTORICAL   CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

can  find  involved  in  very  many  of  your  statements  about 
the  Being  of  social  and  of  physical  realities.  Having 
defined  such  ideas  of  possible  experience,  you  then  test 
them.  If  the  result  conforms  to  the  expectation,  you 
are  so  far  content.  You  have  then  communed  with 
Being.  The  Other  that  was  sought  appears  to  have 
been  found. 

But  no,  it  is  not  wholly  right  to  view  the  matter 
merely  thus.  For  there  are  countless  possible  experi- 
ences that  you  never  test,  and  that  you  still  view  as  be- 
longing to  the  realm  of  physical  and  of  social  validity. 
In  fact,  just  when  you  express  your  own  contentment 
with  your  tests,  you  transcend  what  you  have  actually 
succeeded  in  getting  present  to  your  experience.  The 
ship  has  for  you,  even  as  a  merely  valid  object  in  the  con- 
text of  Kant's  MoglicTie  Erfahrung,  more  Being  than  you 
have  ever  directly  verified.  If  it  had  not,  you  would  in- 
deed call  it  a  figment  of  imagination.  The  prices  and 
credits  of  the  commercial  world  involve  far  more  numer- 
ous types  of  valid  possible  experience  than  any  prudent 
merchant  cares  to  test;  for,  if  these  facts  are  valid  as 
they  are  conceived,  their  very  Being  includes  possibili- 
ties of  unwise  investment  and  of  bankruptcy,  which  the 
prudent  business  man  recognizes  only  to  avoid.  In  fact, 
since  our  whole  voluntary  life  is  selective,  we  all  the 
time  recognize  possibilities  of  experience  only  to  shun  the 
testing  of  them. 

And  so,  in  sum,  the  ordinary  world  of  possible  experi- 
ence has  this  twofold  character.  We  prove  that  it  is 
there  by  testing  empirically,  from  moment  to  moment,  the 
validity  of  our  ideas  about  it;  but  our  very  belief  in  its 


VALIDITY  AND  EXPERIENCE  259 

Being  means  that  we  recognize  its  possession  of  far  more 
validity  than,  in  our  private  capacity,  we  shall  ever  test. 
It  is  thus  with  common  sense,  much  as  it  was  with 
mathematics.  The  mathematician  finds  his  way  in  the 
eternal  world  by  means  of  experiments  upon  the  tran- 
sient facts  of  his  inner  and  ideal  experience  of  this  in- 
stant's contents.  The  student  of  science  or  the  plain 
man  of  everyday  life  believes  himself  to  be  dealing  with 
a  realm  of  validity  far  transcending  his  personal  experi- 
ence. But  his  only  means  of  testing  any  concrete  asser- 
tion about  that  world  comes  to  him  through  the  very 
fragmentary  observation  of  what  happens  in  his  inner  life 
from  instant  to  instant. 

To  generalize,  then,  the  problem  so  far  furnished 
us  by  our  Third  Conception  of  Reality,  we  find  this  as 
our  situation.  Ask  me  how  I  discover,  in  a  concrete 
case,  the  validity  of  my  idea,  how  I  make  it  out  for 
certain  that  a  given  experience  is  possible;  and  then 
I  have  to  answer,  "By  actual  experience  alone."  When 
I  say  then,  "  A  given  idea  is  certainly  valid,"  I  primarily 
mean  merely,  "A  given  idea  is  fulfilled  in  actual  present 
experience."  But  if  you  ask  me  what  I  regard  as  the 
range  of  the  realm  of  validity,  and  what  I  think  to  be 
the  extent  of  possible  experience,  and  of  the  truth  of 
ideas,  then  I  can  only  say  that  the  range  of  valid  pos- 
sible experience  is  viewed  by  me  as  infinitely  more  ex- 
tended than  my  actual  human  experience.  From  the 
mathematical  point  of  view  the  realm  of  truth  is  in 
fact  explicitly  infinite.  From  the  point  of  view  of 
natural  science  and  of  common  sense,  the  world  of 
valid  possible  experience  is  not  only  far  wider  than 


260    THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

our  concrete  human  experience,  but  is  interesting  to 
us  precisely  because  we  can  select  from  its  wealth 
of  possibilities  those  that  we  wish,  as  we  say,  to  real- 
ize. Now  what  our  Third  Conception  so  far  fails  to 
explain  to  us  is  precisely  the  difference  between  the 
reality  that  is  to  be  attributed  to  the  valid  truths  that 
we  do  not  get  concretely  verified  in  our  own  experience, 
and  the  reality  observed  by  us  when  we  do  verify  ideas. 

In  brief,  What  is  a  valid  or  a  determinately  possible  ex- 
perience at  the  moment  when  it  is  supposed  to  be  only 
possible?  What  is  a  valid  truth  at  the  moment  when 
nobody  verifies  its  validity?  When  we  ourselves  find 
the  possible  experience,  it  is  something  living,  definite, 
—  yes,  individual.  When  we  ourselves  verify  a  valid  as- 
sertion, it  is  again  something  that  plays  a  part  in  our 
individual  process  of  living  and  observing.  But  when 
we  speak  of  such  truths  as  barely  valid,  as  merely  pos- 
sible objects  of  experience,  they  appear  once  more  as 
mere  universals.  Can  these  universals,  not  yet  verified, 
consistently  be  regarded  as  possessing  wholeness  of 
Being? 

Or  again,  we  formerly  criticised  Realism  and  Mys- 
ticism alike  because  neither  of  them  sufficiently  took 
account  of  the  fact  that  our  ideas  of  Being  and  the 
Being  of  which  we  have  ideas,  must  occupy  essentially 
the  same  ontological  position.  If,  as  Realism  had  said, 
Being  is  real  independently  of  ideas,  we  saw  that  then 
ideas  are  themselves  realities  independent  of  Being. 
And  if,  as  Mysticism  had  said,  ideas  are  unreal,  we  saw 
that  the  Absolute,  which  Mysticism  undertook  to  seek, 
must  be  unreal  in  the  same  sense  in  which  the  ideas 


VALIDITY  AND   EXPERIENCE  261 

about  it  are  unreal.  Now  the  former  criticism  of  Real- 
ism and  of  Mysticism  must  once  more  be  applied  to 
test  the  adequacy  of  our  present  conception.  We  must 
see  whether  validity  means  the  same  in  our  experience 
as  it  means  when  asserted  of  Being  in  general.  Validity, 
so  far  as  it  has  yet  appeared  in  our  account,  is  an  am- 
biguous term.  As  applied  to  the  ideas  that  we  actually 
test,  it  means  that  they  are  concretely  expressed  in 
experience  whenever  we  test  them.  As  applied  to  the 
whole  realm  of  valid  truth  in  general,  to  the  world  of 
nature  as  not  yet  observed  by  us,  or  of  mathematical 
truth  not  now  present  to  us,  it  means  that  this  realm 
somehow  has  a  character  that  we  still  do  not  test,  and 
that  never  gets  exhaustively  presented  in  our  human 
experience.  But  what  is  this  character? 

Or,  once  more,  in  our  concrete  experience,  the  validity 
of  an  idea,  once  seen,  tested,  presented,  gets  what  we 
then  regard  as  an  individual  life  and  meaning,  since  it 
appears  in  our  individual  experience.  But  in  the  realm 
of  Being  in  general  this  same  validity  appears  univer- 
sal, formal,  —  a  mere  general  law.  Now  can  this  view 
be  final  ?  Can  there  be  two  sorts  of  Being,  both  known 
to  us  as  valid,  but  the  one  individual,  the  other  univer- 
sal, the  one  empirical,  the  other  merely  ideal,  the  one 
present,  the  other  barely  possible,  the  one  a  concrete 
life,  the  other  a  pure  form?  Is  not  the  world  real  in 
the  same  general  sense  in  which  our  life  in  the  world 
is  real  ?  Can  Critical  Rationalism  escape  the  test  already 
applied  to  its  rivals?  And  if  the  test  is  applied,  must 
not  all  Being  prove  to  be  pulsating  with  the  same  life 
of  concrete  experience? 


262    THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

We  shall  see.  History  shows  that  the  rigid  world  of 
the  Platonic  Ideas,  when  viewed  by  later  speculation, 
began  erelong  to  glow,  like  sunset  clouds,  with  the 
light  of  the  Divine  presence ;  and  Neo-Platonism  already 
called  the  Ideas  the  thoughts  of  God.  Shall  there  be 
possible  experience  in  the  realm  of  validity,  and  the  Lord 
hath  not  known  its  meaning? 

This  is  at  present  a  mere  query.  Upon  the  rational 
answer  to  this  query  depends  our  whole  religious 
philosophy. 


LECTUKE  VII 


LECTURE   VII 

THE  INTERNAL  AND   EXTERNAL  MEANING  OF  IDEAS 

WITH  the  former  lecture  our  inquiry  into  the  concep- 
tions of  Being  reached  a  crisis  whose  lesson  we  have  now 
merely  to  record  and  to  estimate.  That  task,  to  be  sure, 
is  itself  no  light  matter. 

I 

Experience  and  Thought  are  upon  our  hands;  and 
together  they  determine  for  us  the  problems  regarding 
Being.  Realism  offered  to  us  the  first  solution  of  this 
problem  by  attempting  to  define  the  Reality  of  the  world 
as  something  wholly  independent  of  our  ideas.  We 
rejected  that  solution  on  the  ground  that  with  an  Inde- 
pendent Being  our  ideas  could  simply  have  nothing  to  do. 
Or,  if  you  please  so  to  interpret  our  discussion  of  Realism, 
we  pointed  out  that  our  ideas,  too,  are  realities ;  and  that 
if  Realism  is  true,  they  are  therefore  in  their  whole  Being 
as  independent  of  their  supposed  realistic  objects  as  the 
latter  are  of  the  ideas.  If,  then,  it  makes  no  difference 
to  the  supposed  external  beings  whether  the  ideas  are  or 
are  not,  it  can  make  no  difference  to  the  ideas  whether  the 
independent  external  Beings  are  or  are  not.  The  sup- 
posed dependence  of  knowledge  for  its  success  upon  its 
so-called  independent  object,  proves,  therefore,  to  be  con- 
tradicted by  the  ontological  independence  inevitably 
possessed  by  the  knowing  idea,  in  case  Realism  is  once 

265 


266    THE   FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

accepted.  For  the  realistic  sort  of  independence  is  an 
essentially  mutual  relation.  The  idea  can  then  say  to  the 
independent  object,  in  a  realistic  world:  "What  care  I  for 
you?  You  are  independent  of  me,  but  so  am  I  of  you. 
No  purpose  of  mine  would  be  unfulfilled  if  you  simply 
vanished,  so  long  as  I  then  still  remained  what  I  am.  And 
I  could,  by  definition,  remain  in  my  whole  Being  unal- 
tered by  your  disappearance.  Accordingly,  since  my  truth 
means  merely  the  fulfilment  of  my  own  purpose,  I  should 
lose  no  truth  if  you  vanished.  In  short,  I  not  only  do  not 
need  you,  but  observe,  upon  second  thought,  that  I  never 
meant  you  at  all,  never  referred  to  you,  never  conceived 
you,  and,  in  truth,  am  even  now  not  addressing  you.  In 
short,  you  are  Nothing." 

With  such  reflections,  we  woke  from  the  realistic 
dream,  and  knew  that  whatever  Being  is,  it  is  not 
independent  of  the  ideas  that  refer  to  it. 

After  our  later  experience  with  the  fascinating  para- 
doxes of  Mysticism  had  equally  shown  us  that  Being 
cannot  be  defined  as  the  ineffable  immediate  fact  that 
quenches  ideas,  and  that  makes  them  all  alike  illusory, 
we  passed,  in  the  two  foregoing  lectures,  to  the  realm  of 
Validity,  to  the  ontological  conceptions  of  Critical 
Rationalism.  What  is,  gives  warrant  to  ideas,  makes 
them  true,  and  enables  us  to  define  determinate,  or  valid, 
possible  experiences.  That  was  the  view  that  we  illus- 
trated as  our  Third  Conception  of  Being.  We  dwelt 
upon  it  so  lengthily  because,  if  it  is  not  the  final  truth, 
it  is,  unquestionably,  as  far  as  it  goes,  true. 

What  we  found  with  regard  to  this  definition  of  Real- 
ity may  be  summed  up  briefly  thus:  In  the  first  place, 


INTERNAL  AND  EXTERNAL  MEANING  OF  IDEAS     267 

the  conception  has  an  obvious  foundation  in  the  popular 
consciousness.  Not  only  does  the  ontological  vocabulary 
of  ordinary  speech  illustrate  this  third  conception  in 
several  ways ;  but,  amongst  the  beings  known  to  common 
sense,  there  are  many  that  are  regarded  as  real  beings, 
but  that  are  still  explicitly  defined  only  in  terms  of 
validity.  Such  beings  are  the  prices  and  credits  of  the 
commercial  world,  the  social  standing  of  individuals, 
the  constitutions  of  Empires,  and  the  moral  law. 

In  the  second  place,  in  science,  mathematics  deals 
exclusively  with  entities  that  are  explicitly  conceived  by 
the  science  in  question  as  of  this  third  type,  and  of  this 
type  only.  In  the  next  place,  as  we  found,  the  Being 
usually  ascribed  to  the  laws  and  to  the  objects  of  physical 
science,  is  capable,  at  least  in  very  large  part,  of  being 
interpreted  in  terms  of  this  third  conception.  Such  con- 
ceived entities  as  Energy  are  typical  instances  of  beings 
of  this  sort.  And,  finally,  all  the  entities  of  even  a  meta- 
physical Realism  proved  to  be  such  that  when  one  tries 
not  to  leave  them  unintelligibly  independent,  but  to  tell 
what  they  are,  there  is  no  means  to  define  their  character 
which  does  not  first  of  all  declare  that  their  reality  in- 
volves the  validity  of  certain  of  our  ideas,  and  the  truth 
of  the  assertion  that,  under  definable  conditions,  particu- 
lar experiences  would  be  possible.  What  else  the  Being 
of  such  entities  would  mean,  remained  for  us  so  far 
undefinable. 

On  the  other  hand,  as  we  concluded  our  former  discus- 
sion, considerations  crowded  upon  us,  which  forced  us 
to  observe  that  in  some  way  this  Third  Conception  of 
Being,  despite  all  the  foregoing,  is  inadequate. 


268    THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

Valid  in  its  own  measure  it  is,  —  to  say  that  is  to  utter 
the  deep  commonplace  of  St.  Augustine's  form  of  the 
ontological  proof  of  the  existence  of  God.  For  it  must 
indeed  be  true  that  there  is  a  Veritas.  Yet  mere  Veritas, 
mere  validity,  still  remains  to  us  a  conception  as  unin- 
telligible as  it  is  insistently  present  to  our  thought. 
And  our  difficulty  at  the  last  time  came  thus  to  light: 
In  mathematics,  you  define  and  prove  valid  assertions, 
and  deal  with  entities,  such  as  roots  of  equations,  and 
properties  of  functions,  whose  Being  seems  to  mean  only 
their  validity.  But  how  do  you  prove  these  propositions 
about  validity  ?  How  do  you  test  the  existence  of  your 
mathematical  objects?  Merely  by  experimenting  upon 
your  present  ideas.  What  is  there  before  you  as  you 
thus  experiment?  At  each  step  of  your  procedure,  one 
moment's  narrow  contents  extend  to  the  very  horizon  of 
your  present  finite  mathematical  experience.  Yet  if  your 
procedure  is,  indeed,  as  it  pretends  to  be,  valid,  the  truth 
that  you  define  embraces  eternity,  and  predetermines  the 
structure  and  the  valid  existence  of  an  infinity  of  objects 
that  you  regard  as  external  to  the  thought  which  defines 
them.  Your  world  of  objects  then  is  here  boundless; 
your  human  grasp  of  these  objects  is  even  pitiably  limited. 
Validity  thus  implies,  in  the  world  of  the  mathematical 
entities,  a  twofold  character.  As  presented,  as  seen  by 
you,  as  here  realized,  the  observed  validity  is  apparently 
given  in  experience,  indeed,  but  as  a  mere  internal  mean- 
ing, —  the  creature  of  the  instant.  But  as  objective,  as 
genuine,  the  validity  is  a  part  of  the  endless  realm  of 
mathematical  truth,  a  realm  that  is,  to  use  Aristotle's 
term,  the  Unmoved  Mover  of  all  your  finite  struggle  for 


INTERNAL  AND  EXTERNAL  MEANING  OF  IDEAS     269 

insight  in  this  region.  How  can  the  one  form  of  Being 
be  thus  ambiguous,  unless,  in  constitution,  it  is  also 
much  wealthier  in  nature  than  the  mere  abstraction  ex- 
pressed in  our  Third  Conception  makes  it  seem.  Or,  to 
put  the  case  otherwise,  the  Third  Conception  of  Being, 
in  defining  possibilities  of  experience,  tells  you  only  of 
mere  abstract  universals.  But  a  mere  universal  is  so  far 
a  bare  what.  One  wants  to  make  more  explicit  the  that, 
to  find  something  individual. 

And,  if  you  pass  from  mathematics  to  the  physical 
instances  of  the  third  conception,  and  to  the  world  of 
moral  and  social  validity,  it  is  of  course  true  that 
every  Being  in  heaven  or  in  earth  exists  for  you  as 
determining  a  valid  possibility  of  experience.  But 
countless  of  these  valid  possibilities  exist  for  you  pre- 
cisely as  possibilities  not  yet  tested  by  you,  and  there- 
fore never  to  be  tested.  Herein  lies  the  very  essence 
of  prudence,  of  generalizing  science,  and  of  moral 
choice,  viz.,  in  the  fact  that  you  recognize  much  experi- 
ence as  possible  only  to  avoid  it,  and  to  refrain  from 
verifying  in  your  own  person  the  valid  possibility.  But 
what  is  a  mere  possibility  when  not  tested?  Is  it  a  mere 
internal  meaning?  Then  where  is  its  Truth?  Is  it 
external?  Then  what  is  its  Being? 

These  were,  in  sum,  our  difficulties  in  regard  to  the 
Third  Conception  of  Being.  Their  solution,  logically 
speaking,  lies  now  very  near.  But  for  us  the  road  must 
still  prove  long.  Meanwhile,  the  formulation  of  all  these 
difficulties  may  be  condensed  into  the  single  question, 
the  famous  problem  of  Pontius  Pilate,  What  is  Truth? 
For  the  Third  Conception  of  Being  has  reduced  Being  to 


270    THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL    CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

Truth,  or  Validity.  But  now  we  need  to  make  out  what 
constitutes  the  very  essence  of  Truth  itself.  It  is  this 
which  at  the  last  time  we  left  still  in  obscurity.  It  is 
this  which  lies  so  near  us,  and  which  still,  because  of 
manifold  misunderstandings,  we  must  long  seek  as  if  it 
were  far  away. 

II 

Our  course  in  approaching  our  final  definition  of  Truth 
will  divide  itself  into  two  stages.  Truth  is  very  fre- 
quently defined,  in  terms  of  external  meaning,  as  that 
about  which  we  judge.  Now,  so  far,  we  have  had  much 
to  say  about  Ideas,  but  we  have  avoided  dwelling  upon 
the  nature  and  forms  of  Judgment.  We  must  here, 
despite  the  technical  dreariness  of  all  topics  of  Formal 
Logic,  say  something  concerning  this  so  far  neglected 
aspect  of  Truth,  and  of  our  relation  to  Truth.  In  the 
second  place,  Truth  has  been  defined  as  the  Correspondence 
between  our  Ideas  and  their  Objects.  We  shall  have,  also, 
to  dwell  upon  this  second  definition  of  Truth.  Only  at 
the  close  of  both  stages  of  the  journey  shall  we  be  able  to 
see,  and  then,  I  hope,  at  one  glance,  whither  through  the 
wilderness  of  this  world  our  steps  have  been  guided. 
The  result  will  reward  the  toil. 

When  we  undertake  to  express  the  objective  validity 
of  any  truth,  we  use  Judgments.  These  judgments,  if 
subjectively  regarded,  —  that  is,  if  viewed  merely  as 
processes  of  our  own  present  thinking,  whose  objects  are 
external  to  themselves,  —  involve,  in  all  their  more  com- 
plex forms,  combinations  of  ideas,  —  devices  whereby  we 
weave  already  present  ideas  into  more  manifold  struc- 


INTERNAL  AND  EXTERNAL  MEANING  OF  IDEAS     271 

tures,  thereby  enriching  our  internal  meanings.  But 
the  act  of  judgment  has  always  its  other — its  objective 
aspect.  The  ideas,  when  we  judge,  are  also  to  possess 
external  meanings.  If  we  try  to  sunder  the  external 
meaning  from  the  internal,  as  we  have  so  far  done,  we 
find  then  that  weaving  the  ideas  into  new  structures  is 
a  mere  incident  of  the  process  whereby  we  regard  them 
as  standing  for  the  valid  Reality,  as  characterizing  what 
their  object  is.  It  is  true,  as  Mr.  Bradley  has  well  said, 
that  the  intended  subject  of  every  judgment  is  Reality 
itself.  The  ideas  that  we  combine  when  we  judge  about 
external  meanings  are  to  have  value  for  us  as  truth  only 
in  so  far  as  they  not  only  possess  internal  meaning,  but 
also  imitate,  by  their  structure,  what  is  at  once  Other 
than  themselves,  and,  in  significance,  something  above 
themselves.  That,  at  least,  is  the  natural  view  of  our 
consciousness,  just  in  so  far  as,  in  judging,  we  conceive 
our  thought  as  essentially  other  than  its  external  object, 
and  as  destined  merely  to  correspond  thereto.  Now  we 
have  by  this  time  come  to  feel  how  hard  it  is  to  define 
the  Reality  to  which  our  ideas  are  thus  to  conform,  and 
about  which  our  judgments  are  said  to  be  made,  so  long 
as  we  thus  sunder  external  and  internal  meanings. 

Yet,  for  the  instant,  we  must  still  continue  to  do  so. 
We  must,  so  to  speak,  "absent  us  from  felicity  awhile," 
and  in  this  world  of  merely  internal  and  disappointed 
meanings,  whose  true  objects  are  still  far  beyond,  and 
whose  only  overt  law  is  so  far  the  law  of  correspondence 
to  those  objects  —  in  this  "  harsh  world,"  I  say,  we  must 
"draw  our  breath  in  pain,"  until  the  real  truth  shall 
become  manifest,  and  take  the  place  of  these  forms  which 


272    THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

now  merely  represent  it.  The  Truth  that  we  pursue  is 
no  longer,  indeed,  the  Independent  Being  of  Realism ;  but 
it  still  remains  something  defined  as  not  our  ideas,  and 
as  that  to  which  they  ought  to  correspond,  so  that  their 
internal  meanings,  interesting  as  these  may  seem,  appear 
the  mere  by-play,  so  to  speak,  of  the  business  of  truth- 
seeking.  And  that  business  seems  to  be  the  task  of 
submitting  our  thought  to  what  is  not  our  own  mere 
thought.  Well,  for  the  time,  we  must  still  accept  this 
situation.  And,  while  we  do  so,  let  us  examine  briefly 
our  processes  of  judgment,  in  so  far  as  these  consciously 
refer  to  external  Objects ;  and  let  us  endeavor  to  observe 
how  our  judgments,  as  they  occur  in  actual  thinking,  or 
are  confirmed  or  refuted  by  our  ordinaiy  experience,  seem 
to  view  their  own  relation  to  Reality.  To  turn  in  this 
direction  is  to  seek  help,  if  you  please,  from  Formal 
Logic.  For  Formal  Logic  is  the  doctrine  that  treats  of 
our  judgments  and  of  their  ordinary  meanings  as  we  make 
and  combine  them. 

Ordinary  judgments,  all  of  them,  as  we  have  just  said, 
make  some  sort  of  reference  to  Reality.  Never  do  you 
judge  at  all,  unless  you  suppose  yourself  to  be  asserting 
something  about  a  real  world.  You  can  express  doubt  as 
to  whether  a  certain  ideal  object  has  its  place  in  Reality. 
You  can  deny  that  some  class  of  ideal  objects  is  real. 
You  can  affirm  the  Being  of  this  or  of  that  object.  But 
never  can  you  judge  without  some  sort  of  conscious  inten- 
tion to  be  in  significant  relation  to  the  Real.  The  what 
and  the  that  are,  indeed,  easily  distinguished,  so  long  as 
you  take  the  distinction  abstractly  enough.  But  never, 
when  you  seriously  judge  in  actual  thinking,  do  you 


INTERNAL  AND  EXTERNAL  MEANING  OF  IDEAS     273 

avoid  reference  both  to  the  what  and  to  the  that  of  the 
universe. 

Now,  this  observation  may  itself  seem  questionable. 
You  may  object:  "Can  I  not  make  judgments  about 
fairies  and  centaurs  without  asserting  whether  they  are 
or  are  not  ?  And  if  I  distinguish  between  ideas  and  facts 
at  all,  cannot  I  do  so  in  my  judgments  also,  and  make 
judgments  about  ideal  objects  merely  as  ideal  objects, 
without  referring  to  the  Reality  in  any  way?"  The 
answer  to  all  these  questions  is  simply,  No.  To  judge 
is  to  judge  about  the  Real.  It  is  to  consider  internal 
meanings  with  reference  to  external  meanings.  It  is  to 
bring  the  what  into  relation  with  the  that.  And  if  you 
have  sundered  the  external  and  internal  meanings,  every 
attempt  to  judge,  even  while  it  recognizes  this  sundering 
as  sharpest,  is  an  effort  to  link  afresh  what  it  all  the 
time,  also,  seems  to  keep  apart.  To  illustrate  the  truth 
of  this  principle,  look  over  the  list  of  forms  of  judgment 
as  they  appear  in  the  ordinary  text-books  of  Logic.  The 
list  in  question  is,  indeed,  in  many  ways,  imperfect;  but 
it  will  serve  for  our  present  purpose. 

Judgments  may  be,  as  the  logical  tradition  says,  "  Cate- 
gorical," or  "Hypothetical,"  or  "Disjunctive."  That  is, 
they  may  assert,  for  example,  that  A  is  B ;  or  they  may 
affirm  that  If  A  is  B,  then  C  is  D ;  or  they  may  declare 
that  Either  A  is  B,  or  else  C  is  D.  This  ancient  classifi- 
cation is  no  very  deep  one ;  but  it  may  aid  us  to  survey 
how  our  various  sorts  of  judgment  view  Reality. 

Let  us  begin  with  the  "hypothetical"  judgment,  the 
judgment  of  the  bare  "if."  This  sort  of  judgment  seems, 
of  course,  to  be  capable  of  becoming  as  remote  as  pos- 


274    THE  FOUR    HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF   BEING 

sible  from  any  assertion  about  Being,  and  as  completely 
as  possible  a  judgment  about  "mere  ideas."  "If  wishes 
were  horses,  beggars  might  ride."  "If  the  bowl  had 
been  stronger,  my  tale  had  been  longer."  "If  a  body 
were  left  undisturbed  by  any  external  cause,  it  would 
continue  its  state  of  rest,  or  of  uniform  motion,  in  a 
straight  line  unchanged."  Are  not  all  these  judgments 
about  purely  ideal  objects,  and  not  about  Being,  or  about 
any  real  world?  Where  are  wishes  horses?  When  do 
beggars  ride  on  their  own  steeds?  When  were  the  wise 
men  of  Gotham  in  the  bowl?  What  real  body  moves 
undisturbed  ? 

And  yet,  I  answer,  these  are  all  of  them  judgments 
that,  if  they  are  true,  do  not  indeed  directly  tell  us  what 
the  world  of  valid  Being  actually  and  concretely  con- 
tains, but  do  tell  us  what  that  real  world  does  not 
contain.  Jndirectly,  by  limiting  the  range  of  valid 
possibilities,  they  thus  throw  light  upon  what  the  world 
does  contain.  Thus  the  First  Law  of  Motion,  as  stated, 
tells  us  that  there  are  no  bodies  which,  although  undis- 
turbed by  external  causes,  still  move  in  lines  not  straight, 
and  with  velocities  that  vary.  Hence,  since  the  physi- 
cal bodies  observed  by  us  turn  out  to  be  in  motion,  in 
various  curves,  and  with  varying  velocities,  we  are 
directed  to  look  for  the  causes  hereof  in  the  disturbances 
to  which  these  bodies  are  subjected.  So  it  is,  also,  in 
the  other  cases  mentioned,  in  so  far  as  these  statements 
are  true  at  all.  In  general,  the  judgment,  "  If  A  is  B, 
C  is  D, "  can  be  interpreted  as  meaning  that  there  are,  in 
the  world  oi  valid  objects,  no  real  cases  where,  at  once, 
A  is  B,  while  at  the  same  time  C  is  nevertheless  not  D. 


INTERNAL   AND   EXTERNAL   MEANING  OF   IDEAS     275 

A  good  instance  is  furnished  by  any  sincere  promise,  such 
as  a  promise  to  a  child,  in  the  form :  "  If  you  do  that  1 
will  reward  you."  The  promise  relates  to  the  valid  Being 
of  the  future.  It  asserts  that  this  future,  when  it  comes 
to  be  present,  shall  not  contain  the  event  of  the  child's 
doing  that  work  wwrewarded  by  the  giver  of  the  promise. 
So,  then,  hypothetical  judgments  tell  us  that  some  ideally 
defined  object,  often  of  very  complex  structure,  finds  no 
place  in  Being.  Even  the  fantastic  examples  of  the 
wishes  and  the  bowl  involve  the  same  sort  of  assertion, 
true  or  false,  as  to  a  real  world. 

The  judgments  of  simple  assertion,  the  categorical 
judgments,  are  of  the  two  general  classes,  the  "Uni- 
versal "  and  the  "  Particular "  judgments,  namely  those, 
respectively,  that  speak  of  all  things  of  a  class  and  those 
that  only  tell  about  some  things.  But  here,  again,  it 
would  seem,  at  first,  as  if  an  universal  judgment  might 
concern  itself  wholly  with  ideal  objects.  When  a  con- 
tract is  made,  universal  judgments  are,  in  general,  used. 
"All  the  property"  of  a  given  sort,  if  ever  it  comes  to 
exist,  is  by  the  terms  of  the  contract  "to  be  delivered," 
perhaps,  to  such  and  such  a  person.  "All  payments" 
under  the  contract  "are  to  be  made,"  thus  and  thus. 
But,  perhaps,  if  ever  the  contract  comes  later  to  be  adju- 
dicated, it  may  be  found  that  no  property  of  the  sort  in 
question  has  ever  come  into  existence,  or  has  ever  been 
delivered  at  all ;  and  then  it  may  be  decided  that,  by  the 
very  terms  of  the  contract,  and  just  by  virtue  of  its  legal 
validity,  no  obligation  exists  to  make  any  of  the  men- 
tioned payments.  So  all  contracts  concerning  future 
work,  delivery,  or  compensation  are,  on  their  face,  about 


276    THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

ideal  objects,  which  may  never  come  to  be  in  valid  Being 
at  all.  In  fact,  genuinely  universal  judgments,  as  Her- 
bart  and  a  good  many  more  recent  Logicians  have  taught, 
are  essentially  hypothetical  in  their  true  nature.  But 
for  that  very  reason,  like  the  hypothetical  judgments,  the 
universal  judgments,  taken  in  their  strictest  sense,  apart 
from  special  provisos,  are  judgments  that  undertake  to 
exclude  from  the  valid  Reality  certain  classes  of  objects. 
To  say  that  All  A  is  B,  is,  in  fact,  merely  to  assert  that 
the  real  world  contains  no  objects  that  are  A's,  but  that 
fail  to  be  of  the  class  B.  To  say  that  No  A  is  B  is  to 
assert  that  the  real  world  contains  no  objects  that  are  at 
once  A  and  B.  Neither  judgment,  strictly  interpreted, 
tells  you  that  A  exists,  but  only  that  if  it  exists,  it  is  B. 
Now  those  mathematical  judgments,  of  whose  endless 
wealth  and  eternal  validity  we  have  heretofore  spoken, 
are  very  frequently,  although  by  no  means  always,  of  the 
universal  type.  They  refer  to  Being, — a  Being  of  the 
third  type, — and,  when  universal,  they  assert,  about  a 
realm  of  definite  or  relatively  determinate,  although  still 
universal  validity,  or  possibility,  something  that  proves 
to  be  primarily  negative,  so  far  as  its  relation  to  its  ex- 
ternal object  is  concerned.  They  accomplish  their  asser- 
tions by  means  of  the  very  fact  that  they  undertake  to 
exclude  from  the  realm  of  externally  valid  Being,  certain 
ideal  combinations  that,  in  the  first  place,  would  have 
seemed  abstractly  possible,  if  one  had  not  scrutinized 
one's  ideas  more  closely.  Thus,  to  know  that  universally 
2  +  2  =  4,  is  to  know  that  there  nowhere  exists,  in  all  the 
realm  of  external  validity,  a  two  and  a  two  that,  when 
added,  fail  to  give,  as  the  result,  four.  In  advance  of 


INTERNAL  AND  EXTERNAL  MEANING  OF  IDEAS     277 

such  knowledge,  the  opposite  would  seem  abstractly  pos- 
sible. But  it  proves  to  be  only  verbally  or  apparently 
possible.  Determinately  viewed,  only  the  "  actual  sum  " 
is  possible. 

In  general,  when  we  judge  in  universal  ways,  we 
begin,  before  we  attain  an  insight  into  the  truth  of  our 
judgment,  by  stating,  as  abstractly  possible,  more  ideal 
alternatives  than  in  the  end  will  prove  to  be  determi- 
nately  possible,  or  to  be  valid  possibilities.  In  the  exact 
sciences,  or,  again,  in  case  of  those  practically  important 
realms  of  Being  which  we  view  as  subject  to  our  choice, 

—  whenever  we  win  control  over  a  system  of  ideas,  and 
assert  a  truth,   or  decide  upon  a  course  of  action,   and 
whenever  we  do  this  upon  the  basis  of  general  principles, 

—  our  insight  is  always  destructive  of  merely  abstract  pos- 
sibilities,  and,   where  our  knowledge  takes  the  form  of 
universal   judgments,    they  are    always    primarily   such 
destructive  judgments,  so  far  as  they  relate  to  external 
objects.     They  tell  us,  indirectly,  what  is,  in  the  realm 
of  external  meanings,  but  only  by  first  telling  us  what  is 
not. 

The  consequence  is  that  universal  categorical  judg- 
ments, being  always  primarily  negative  in  force,  en- 
lighten us  regarding  that  realm  of  the  external  meanings 
which  is  still  for  us,  at  this  stage,  the  realm  of  Being, 
only  by  virtue  of  the  junction,  overt  or  implied,  of  the 
universal  categorical  judgments  with  disjunctive  judg- 
ments, i.e.  with  judgments  of  the  either,  or  type.  One 
who  inquires  into  a  matter  upon  which  he  believes  him- 
self able  to  decide  in  universal  terms,  e.g.  in  mathe- 
matics, has  present  to  his  mind,  at  the  outset,  questions 


278    THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

such  as  admit  of  alternative  answers.  "A,"  he  declares, 
11  in  case  it  exists  at  all,  is  either  B  or  C."  Further  research 
shows  universally,  perhaps,  that  No  A  is  B.  Hereupon 
the  abstract  possibilities  are  in  so  far  reduced,  and  the 
world  of  Being,  taken  still  as  a  realm  of  external  mean- 
ings, is  limited  to  a  realm  where  "  If  A  exists  at  all,  it 
can  only  be  C."  The  purpose  of  our  universal  judgments 
is  thus  that,  by  the  aid  of  disjunctive  judgments,  they 
enable  us  to  determine  the  world  of  Being  by  cutting  off 
some  apparent  possibilities  as  really  impossible,  and  by 
then  taking  the  remaining  alternatives,  not  in  general, 
as  any  entirely  determinate  account  of  what  is,  but  as  a 
less  indeterminate  account  of  Reality  than  is  the  one  with 
which  we  started.  To  think  in  universal  terms  is  thus 
to  attempt,  as  it  were,  to  exhaust  the  abstractly  possible 
alternatives,  and  to  define  what  exists  in  yonder  external 
world  as  what  survives  the  various  stages  of  ideal  de- 
struction through  which  one  passes  as  one  judges.  So 
long  as  thus,  separating  ideas  from  their  external  mean- 
ings, you  struggle  through  universal  judgments  towards 
the  far-off  truth,  your  principle  is  the  one  that  Spinoza 
stated,  Omnis  Determinatio  est  Negatio.  The  universal 
truth  is  the  slayer  of  what  seemingly  might  have  been, 
but  also  of  what,  as  a  fact,  proves  to  be  not  possible. 

As  for  your  disjunctive  judgments  themselves,  even 
they,  too,  affirm  about  external  Being  only  by  first  deny- 
ing. "  A  is  either  B  or  C ;  there  is  no  third  possibility  open, " 
—  such  must  be  one's  assertion  when  a  disjunction  is 
announced.  The  type  of  an  ideally  perfect  and  evident 
disjunction  is  the  assertion,  "A  is  either  B  or  w0£-B," 
where  B  and  not-B  are  the  alternative  members  of  a 


INTERNAL  AND  EXTERNAL  MEANING  OF  IDEAS     279 

"dichotomy,"  i.e.  of  an  exhaustive  and  twofold  division 
of  the  Universe  of  your  Discourse,  as  at  any  time  you 
conceive  its  Reality  to  be  opened  to  your  ideal  inspec- 
tion. 

This  general  situation  of  our  thought  in  all  those 
branches  of  inquiry  where,  as  very  often  in  mathematics, 
we  deal  with  universal  truth,  and  reason  out  results 
about  Being,  while  still  viewing  Reality  as  Another  than 
thought,  is  a  situation  that  stimulates  us  to  manifold 
inquiries.  In  the  first  place,  as  you  at  once  see,  the  limi- 
tations of  all  our  merely  abstract  and  universal  reason- 
ing about  the  world,  when  taken  as  a  world  of  external 
meanings,  are,  at  a  stroke,  laid  bare  by  virtue  of  these 
very  considerations.  For  by  mere  reasoning,  in  these 
universal  terms,  we  never  directly  and  determinately 
characterize  the  Being  of  things  as  it  finally  is.  We  at 
best,  and  even  if  we  are  quite  sure  of  our  universal  truths, 
tell  what  external  Reality  is  not,  and  add  that,  of  the  re- 
maining abstractly  possible  and  definable  alternatives,  it 
is  doubtless  determinately  some  one,  and  no  other. 
But,  apart  from  any  scepticism,  justified  or  not,  regard- 
ing the  validity  of  our  universal  judgments  themselves, 
they  at  best  carry  us  a  certain  way  only  in  an  undertak- 
ing that  seems  essentially  endless,  and,  in  fact,  worse 
than  endless.  And  that  is  the  undertaking  of  exhausting 
all  the  possible  alternatives,  and  so  of  making  the  finally 
valid  possibility,  that  can  alone  remain,  into  something 
absolutely  determinate.  And  where  the  sole  principle  is 
that  Omnis  Determinatio  est  Negatio,  this  task  is  indeed 
not  only  endless,  but  hopeless. 

This,  in  fact,  is  why  mathematical  science,  especially 


280    THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

in  so  far  as  it  deals  merely  with  universal  truths,  can 
never  hope,  by  any  conceivable  skill  in  construction, 
to  replace  the  more  empirical  sciences,  and  merely  to 
define  the  world  in  terms  of  its  own  sort  of  universal 
validity.  For  every  step  of  the  process  is  a  cutting- 
off  indeed  of  false  possibilities,  and  an  assertion  of 
what  therefore  seems  the  more  precisely  and  determi- 
nately  limited  range  of  the  valid  possibilities.  But  at 
every  step,  also,  the  range  beyond  is  simply  inexhaust- 
ible, so  far  as  you  take  your  object  as  merely  external. 
Unless  some  other  principle  than  that  of  mere  nega- 
tion determines  the  realm  of  valid  Being,  then  it  has 
no  final  determination  at  all.  Looking  beyond,  to  that 
realm  of  external  meanings,  we  say:  A  is  never  B. 
Well  then,  comes  the  retort,  What  is  it?  So  far,  the 
answer  is,  Whatever  else  is  still  possible.  Is  it  C  then? 
A  further  reasoning  process  perhaps  excludes  this,  or 
some  other,  possibility  also.  Have  we  found  out  the 
positive  contents  of  Being?  No,  we  have  only  again 
excluded.  And  so  we  continue  indefinitely,  not  only 
with  an  infinite  process  upon  our  hands,  but  with  no 
definite  prospect  as  to  positive  consequences  to  be  won 
by  exhausting  even  this  infinity.  This  is  the  essential 
defect  of  "merely  reasoning,"  in  abstractly  universal 
terms,  about  the  external  nature  of  things. 

But  all  this  has,  indeed,  another  aspect.  This  nega- 
tive character  of  the  universal  judgments  holds  true  of 
them,  as  we  have  said,  just  in  so  far  as  you  sunder  the 
external  and  the  internal  meanings,  and  just  in  so  far  as 
you  view  the  Real  as  the  Beyond,  and  as  merely  the 
Beyond.  If  you  turn  your  attention  once  more  to  the 


INTERNAL  AND  EXTERNAL  MEANING  OF  IDEAS     281 

realm  of  the  ideas  viewed  as  internal  meanings,  you  see, 
indeed,  that  they  are  constantly  becoming  enriched,  in 
their  inner  life,  by  all  this  process.  Take  your  thinking 
merely  as  that  which  is  to  correspond  to  an  external 
Other,  and  then,  indeed,  your  universal  judgments  tell 
you  only  what  this  Other  is  not,  and  leave,  as  what  it 
is,  merely  some  of  the  possibilities  still  wwdestroyed. 
But  view  the  internal  meaning  of  thought  as  a  life  for 
itself,  and  revel  in  the  beautiful  complexities  of  a  mathe- 
matical, or  other  rationally  constructed  realm  of  inner 
expressions  of  your  thoughtful  purposes;  and  then, 
indeed,  you  seem  to  have  found  a  positive  constitution 
of  an  universe  that,  alas!  is,  after  all,  as  contrasted 
with  those  "external  facts,"  to  be  regarded  only  as  a 
shadowland.  "Is  it  really  so  yonder?"  you  say.  Is 
namely  the  positive  aspect  of  all  this  construction  present 
in  that  world?  Your  universal  judgments  cannot  tell. 
To  take,  again,  the  simplest  case:  To  know,  by  inner 
demonstration,  that  2  +  2  =  4,  and  that  this  is  necessarily 
so,  is  not  yet  to  know  that  the  so-called  "external  world," 
taken  merely  as  the  Beyond,  contains  any  true  or  finally 
valid  variety  of  objects  at  all,  — any  two  or  four  objects 
that  can  be  counted.  That  you  must  learn  otherwise, 
namely,  of  course,  by  what  is  usually  called  "external 
experience  "  of  that  outer  world.  On  the  other  hand,  so 
far  as  your  internal  meaning  goes,  to  have  seen  for  your- 
self, to  have  experienced  within,  that  which  makes  you 
call  this  judgment  necessary,  is,  indeed,  to  have  observed 
a  character  about  your  own  ideas  which  rightly  seems  to 
you  very  positive.  So,  then,  universal  judgments  and 
reasonings  appear  to  be  of  positive  interest  in  the  realm 


282    THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

of  internal  meanings,  but  only  of  negative  worth  as  to 
the  other  objects. 

All  this,  however,  only  brings  afresh  to  light  the  para- 
doxical character  of  all  this  sundering  of  external  and 
internal  meanings.  For  at  this  point  arises  the  ancient 
question,  How  can  you  know  at  all  that  your  judgment 
is  universally  valid,  even  in  this  ideal  and  negative  way, 
about  that  external  realm  of  validity,  in  so  far  as  it  is 
external,  and  is  merely  your  Other, — the  Beyond? 
Must  you  not  just  dogmatically  say  that  that  world  must 
agree  with  your  negations?  This  judgment  is  indeed 
positive.  But  how  do  you  prove  it?  The  only  answer 
has  to  be  in  terms  which  already  suggest  how  vain  is  the 
very  sundering  in  question.  If  you  can  predetermine, 
even  if  but  thus  negatively,  what  cannot  exist  in  the 
object,  the  object  then  cannot  be  merely  foreign  to  you. 
It  must  be  somewhat  predetermined  by  your  Meaning. 
But  of  this  matter  we  shall  soon  hear  more  in  another 
connection.  The  result  is  so  far  baffling  enough.  Yet 
in  this  situation  most  of  our  ordinary  thinking  about  the 
world  is  done. 

Let  us  pass  to  the  "  particular  affirmative  "  judgments. 
As  has  been  repeatedly  pointed  out  in  the  discussions  on 
recent  Logic,1  the  particular  judgments,  — whose  form  is 
Some  A  is  B,  or  Some  A  is  wo£-B,  —  are  the  typical  judg- 
ments that  positively  assert  Being  in  the  object  viewed 
as  external.  This  fact  constitutes  their  essential  con- 
trast with  the  universal  judgments.  They  undertake  to 
cross  the  chasm  that  is  said  to  sunder  internal  and  exter- 

1  Amongst  others  by  Mr.  Charles  Peirce,  by  Schroeder,  by  Mr.  Venn, 
and,  quite  independently,  by  Brentano,  in  his  Psychologic. 


INTERNAL  AND  EXTERNAL  MEANING  OF  IDEAS     283 

nal  meanings;  and  the  means  by  which  they  do  so  is 
always  what  is  called  "external  experience."  No  "pure 
thinking"  can  ever  really  prove  a  particular  judgment 
about  external  objects.  You  have  to  appeal  to  outer 
experience.  On  the  other  hand,  all  empirical  judgments 
about  objects  of  external  meaning,  viewed  merely  as 
such,  are,  or  should  be,  in  this  form  of  the  particular 
judgments.  It  is  a  form  at  once  positive  and  very  unsat- 
isfactorily indeterminate.  It  expresses  the  fact  that 
there  has  been  found  some  case  where  an  A  that  is  a  B 
not  only  may  exist,  in  yonder  object  with  which  we  are 
to  correspond,  but  does  exist.  The  defect  of  these  judg- 
ments is  that  they  never  tell  us,  by  themselves,  precisely 
what  object  this  existent  instance  of  an  A  that  is  B  really 
is.  In  other  words,  they  are  particular,  but  are  not  indi- 
vidual judgments.  Yet,  as  we  shall  hereafter  more  fully 
see,  and  have  already  in  a  measure  observed,  what  we 
want  our  knowledge  to  show  us  about  the  Being  of 
things,  is  what  Reality,  taken  as  an  individual  whole, 
or,  again,  as  this  individual,  finally  is.  Hence,  the  par- 
ticular judgments,  —  those  of  external  experience  viewed 
as  external,  —  are  especially  instructive  as  to  the  nature 
that  our  ordinary  thinking  attributes  to  Being,  and  as  to 
what  we  demand  of  our  Other.1 

1  The  assertion  that  purely  ideal  reasoning  processes,  viewed  as  mere 
internal  meanings,  never  result  in  particular  propositions  about  their 
external  objects,  is  one  extensively  discussed  by  Schroeder  and  by  many 
others.  See  Schroeder,  Algebra  der  Logik,  Bd.  II,  p.  86,  sqq.  The  de- 
fence of  the  assertion  in  detail,  as  a  matter  of  formal  Logic,  would  here 
take  us  too  far  afield.  Speaking  briefly,  one  can  remind  the  reader,  by 
the  use  of  a  familiar  example  :  (1)  That  unless  wisdom  is  conceived  neces- 
sarily to  follow  from  the  nature  of  man,  you  cannot,  by  "  mere  reason- 


284    THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

Our  situation,  then,  is,  in  substance,  this :  We  have 
our  internal  meanings.  We  develop  them  in  inner  expe- 
rience. There  they  get  presented  as  something  of  uni- 
versal value,  but  always  in  fragments.  They,  therefore, 
so  far  dissatisfy.  We  conceive  of  the  Other  wherein  these 
meanings  shall  get  some  sort  of  final  fulfilment.  We 
view  our  ideas  as  shadows  or  imitations  of  this  Other; 
and  we  make  judgments  as  to  how  well  they  represent  it. 
When  we  study  the  universally  expressible  aspects  of 
Reality,  we  get  the  sense,  —  no  matter  at  present  how,  — 
that,  in  such  cases  as  those  of  the  judgment  2  +  2  =  4, 
we  can,  in  idea,  predetermine  the  constitution  of  the 
external  object.  But  if  we  look  closer,  we  see  that  no 

ing,"  find  out  whether  or  no  any  man  is  wise,  so  long  as  man  is  taken  to 
be  an  external  object.  You  have  to  turn  to  "external  experience."  If, 
in  experience,  you  then  find  somebody  say  Socrates  to  be  a  wise  man,  the 
matter  is  empirically  settled  in  favor  of  the  judgment :  Some  man  is  wise. 
But,  (2)  on  the  other  hand,  even  in  case  wisdom  followed,  as  an  ideally 
necessary  result,  from  the  mere  nature  of  man,  then  you  would  know 
indeed,  by  mere  reasoning,  that  z/any  man  exists  at  all,  that  man  is  wise. 
But  apart  from  the  "external  experience"  itself,  you  would  still  fail  to 
know,  through  the  "pure  ideas,"  whether  there  exists  indeed  any  man  at 
all.  And  you  still  could  not  assert,  despite  your  reasoning,  the  truth  of 
the  proposition  that  some  man  is  urise,  until  you  had  first  found  that  man 
exists  in  the  realm  of  the  external  meanings.  All  this  is  an  inevitable 
consequence  of  the  sundering  between  the  internal  and  the  external 
meanings ;  and  holds  true  so  long  as  the  sundering  is  insisted  upon.  The 
traditional  Logic  of  the  text-books,  when  it  reasons  from  universals  to 
their  subalternate  particulars,  or  derives  particular  conclusions  from  uni- 
versal premises,  does  so  by  tacitly  and,  in  general,  by  unjustifiably  as- 
suming the  external  existence  of  the  objects  reasoned  about,  while  all  the 
time  still  sundering  external  and  internal.  Reasoning  itself  is,  to  be 
sure,  experience,  but  is,  by  hypothesis,  experience  of  internal  meanings, 
not  of  the  external  meanings  which  are  taken,  by  this  sort  of  thinking, 
to  be  the  Reality. 


INTERNAL  AND  EXTERNAL   MEANING  OF  IDEAS     285 

such  predeterminations  involve  more  than  the  assertion 
that  Being,  as  thus  predetermined,  excludes  and  forbids 
certain  of  the  ideal  constructions  that,  at  first,  seem  pos- 
sible. But  what  Being,  in  so  far  as  it  is  merely  Other 
and  external,  positively  contains,  we  cannot  thus  dis- 
cover. 

How  else  shall  we  attempt  to  discover  this  desired  ful- 
filment of  our  purpose  ?  The  ordinary  answer  is,  By  exter- 
nal experience.  Now  this  so-called  external  experience  is 
never  what  you  might  call  "Pure  Experience."  For  only 
the  mystic  looks  for  Pure  Experience  wholly  apart  from 
ideas.  And  we  already  know  what  he  finds.  He  is  the 
only  thoroughgoing  Empiricist;  and  he  has  his  reward. 
What  is  usually  called  "Experience,"  by  common  sense 
or  by  science,  is  not  purely  immediate  content,  and  it  is  not 
whatever  happens  to  come  to  hand.  It  is  carefully  and 
attentively  selected  experience.  It  is  experience  lighted 
up  by  ideas.  They,  as  our  internal  meanings,  are  incom- 
plete, and  they  therefore  take  the  form  of  asking  ques- 
tions. They  formulate  ideal  schemes,  and  then  they 
inquire,  Have  these  schemes  any  correspondent  facts, 
yonder,  in  that  externally  valid  object?  The  very  ques- 
tion is  full  of  ideal  presuppositions,  which  one  in  vain 
endeavors  to  renounce  by  calling  himself  a  pure  empiricist. 
Unless  he  is  a  mystic  he  is  no  such  pure  empiricist.  And 
if  he  is  a  mystic,  he  abhors  ideas  and  frames  no  hypothe- 
ses, except  for  the  sake  of  merely  teaching  his  doctrine  in 
exoteric  fashion.  But  a  scientific  empiricist  has  hypothe- 
ses, —  internal  meanings,  ideal  constructions,  —  and  he 
deliberately  chooses  to  submit  these  to  the  control  of  what 
he  views  as  external  experience.  If  you  ask  why  he  does 


286     THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

so,  he  answers,  very  rightly,  that  he  has  no  other  road 
open  to  the  grasping  of  yonder  "external  object."  But 
this  answer  means  more  than  an  empiricist  of  this  type 
usually  observes.  Wholly  inconsistent  with  any  abstract 
Realism  (which  is  always  metempirical  in  its  actual  as- 
sumptions), the  wish  of  the  ordinary  empiricist,  however 
highly  trained  his  scientific  judgment,  and  however 
steadfast  his  assurance  that  the  idea  and  its  valid  object 
are  somehow  sundered  aspects  of  Being,  is  always  simply 
to  enrich  his  internal  meanings  by  giving  them  a  selec- 
tive control  which,  of  their  own  moving,  they  cannot  find. 
Or,  in  the  ordinary  phraseology,  Man  thinks  in  order  to 
get  control  of  his  world,  and  thereby  of  himself.  What 
the  bare  internal  meanings,  in  their  poverty,  leave  as  an 
open  question,  the  external  experience  shall  decide.  If 
you  ask,  again,  What  experience?  the  answer  always  is, 
Not  any  experience  that  you  please,  but  a  sort  of  experi- 
ence determined  by  the  question  asked,  viz.,  whatever 
experience  is  apt  to  decide  between  conflicting  ideas,  and 
to  determine  them  to  precise  meaning. 

It  is  customary  to  dwell  upon  the  "crushing  character," 
the  "overwhelming  power"  of  "stubborn  empirical  facts." 
The  character  in  question  is,  of  course,  a  valid  one.  Yet 
this  crushing  force  of  experience  is  never  a  barely  imme- 
diate fact;  it  is  something  relative  to  the  particular  ideas 
in  question.  For,  as  I  must  repeat,  our  so-called  external 
experience,  that  is,  our  experience  taken  as  other  than 
our  meanings,  and  viewed  as  what  confirms  or  refutes 
them  here  or  there,  never  does  more,  in  any  question  con- 
cerning the  truth,  than  to  decide  our  ideal  issues,  and  to 
decide  them  in  particular  instances,  whose  character  and 


INTERNAL  AND  EXTERNAL  MEANING  OF  IDEAS    287 

meaning  for  us  are  determined  solely  by  what  ideas  of 
our  own  are  in  question.  Or,  again,  empirical  judgments, 
as  such,  are  always  particular.  Hence,  they  never  by 
themselves  absolutely  confirm,  or  refute,  all  that  our 
ideas  mean.  And  what  they  confirm,  or  refute,  depends 
upon  what  questions  have  been  asked  from  the  side  of 
our  internal  meanings. 

The  empirical  facts  can,  indeed,  refute,  and  they  very 
often  do  refute,  abstractly  stated  universal  judgments,  by 
showing  particular  cases  that  contradict  these  judgments. 
But  they  can  never  show,  by  themselves,  that  the  ideas 
in  question  have  no  application,  anywhere,  in  yonder 
externally  valid  world,  but  only  that  in  some  case  just 
these  ideas  fail.  Hence,  unless  I  have  ideally  chosen 
to  stake  my  all  upon  a  single  throw  of  the  dice  of 
"external  experience,"  I  am  not  logically  "crushed"  by 
the  particular  experience  that  this  time  disappoints  me. 
If  my  internal  meaning  takes,  for  instance,  the  form  of 
a  plan  of  external  action,  I  can,  if  this  time  defeated, 
"  try  again  " ;  and  the  human  will  has  in  all  ages  shown 
its  power  not  to  be  crushed  by  any  particular  experience, 
unless  its  ideas  determine  that  it  ought  to  accept  the 
defeat.  Ideas  can  be  quite  as  stubborn  as  any  particular 
facts,  can  outlast  them,  and  often,  in  the  end,  abolish 
them.  Even  if  the  internal  meaning  is  a  merely  imita- 
tive conception,  that,  like  a  scientific  hypothesis,  was 
solely  intended  to  portray  the  nature  of  the  external 
fact,  then  the  empirical  failure  of  the  hypothesis,  in  a 
given  instance,  shows,  indeed,  that  it  is  not  universally 
valid  as  regards  yonder  external  world  of  finally  valid 
fact,  but  does  not  show  that  it  is  universally  w  valid. 


288     THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

Experience,  taken  as  external  and  particular,  can  never 
prove  any  absolute  negation. 

On  the  other  hand,  but  for  the  very  same  reason,  our 
experience,  when  taken  as  in  contrast  to  our  internal 
meanings,  can  never,  in  any  finite  time,  completely  con- 
firm or  demonstrate  any  universal  judgment,  such  as, 
upon  the  basis  of  our  internal  meanings,  we  may  have 
asserted.  Some  A  is  B.  That  is  all  that  your  experience, 
when  viewed  as  other  than  your  ideas,  and  as  that  to  which 
you  appeal  for  the  sake  of  defining  your  external  object, 
can  ever  by  itself  reveal.  Herein  lies  the  well-known 
limitation  of  the  merely  "  inductive  "  processes  of  science. 
That  we  all  believe  universal  propositions  about  yonder 
external  world  of  valid  objects,  is  due  to  the  fact  that  we 
are  none  of  us  mere  empiricists,  even  in  this  modified 
sense.  All  of  us  view  some  of  our  ideas  as  predetermin- 
ing the  nature  of  things,  so  that  we  conceive  the  reality  as 
the  fulfilment  of  distinctly  internal  meanings,  —  with 
what  right  we  have  yet  to  see. 

All  of  these  considerations  arise  in  a  realm  where  inter- 
nal and  external  meanings,  without  ever  being  viewed  as 
abstractly  independent  of  one  another,  are  still  taken  as 
actually  and  rightly  sundered.  And  this,  as  we  have 
now  seen,  is  the  case  throughout  the  world  of  our  Third 
Conception.  All  who  use  this  conception,  that  is,  all 
who  once  learn  rationally  to  modify  their  Realism,  while 
still  regarding  the  antithesis  of  internal  and  of  external 
as  finally  valid,  employ  the  two  main  types  of  judgment 
which  we  have  now  examined.  When  the  mathemati- 
cians use  the  existential  judgments,  of  which  we  before 
have  spoken,  they,  too,  employ  the  particular  judgments 


INTERNAL  AND  EXTERNAL  MEANING  OF  IDEAS     289 

and  appeal  to  what,  for  their  current  ideas,  constitutes  a 
relatively  external  realm  of  experience.  When,  believ- 
ing that  their  own  science,  too,  has  become  exact,  the 
students  of  nature,  in  their  turn,  use  universal  judgments ; 
they  just  as  truly  appeal,  for  their  sole  warrant,  to  in- 
ternal meanings,  as  do  the  mathematicians  when  the  latter 
think  about  universal  truth. 

As  to  these  two  types  of  judgment,  the  universal  and 
the  particular,  they  both,  as  we  have  seen,  make  use  of 
experience.  The  one  type,  the  universal  judgments, 
arise  in  the  realm  where  experience  and  idea  have  already 
fused  into  one  whole ;  and  this  is  precisely  the  realm  of 
internal  meanings.  Here  one  constructs,  and  observes 
the  consequences  of  one's  construction.  But  the  con- 
struction is  at  once  an  experience  of  fact,  and  an  idea; 
at  once  an  expression  of  a  purpose,  and  an  observation  of 
what  happens.  Upon  the  basis  of  such  ideal  constructions, 
one  makes  universal  judgments.  These,  in  a  fashion 
still  to  us,  at  this  stage,  mysterious,  undertake  to  be  valid 
of  that  other  world,  —  the  world  of  external  meanings, 
the  realm  that  is  said  to  be  the  Reality  of  which  these 
ideas  are  the  shadow  and  imitation.  But  every  assertion 
of  this  sort  implies  that  in  verity  the  external  and  the 
internal  meanings  are  not  sundered,  but  have  some  deeper 
unity,  which,  in  this  realm  of  mere  validity,  you  can 
never  make  manifest.  Meanwhile,  this  control  of  idea 
over  fact  is,  indeed,  here  viewed  as  limited.  The  ideal 
necessities  only  determine  what  the  facts  are  not,  and  not 
what  the  facts  are. 

On  the  other  hand,  since  this  realm  of  internal  mean- 
ings is,  in  us  men,  limited  and  fragmentary,  one  indeed 


290     THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

seeks  to  enlarge  its  realm.  And  in  doing  so  one  appeals 
to  what  is  called  the  external  experience;  and  hereupon 
one  makes  those  particular  judgments  which  are  the  typi- 
cal expression  of  our  human  sort  of  external  experience. 
But  this  is  experience  so  far  as  it  has  not  yet  fused 
with  the  internal  meanings;  but  so  far  as,  nevertheless, 
through  selection  and  through  patient  effort,  it  can 
gradually  be  brought  to  the  point  where  it  decides 
ideal  issues.  As  other  than  the  ideas,  this  experience 
is  said  to  be  the  evidence  and  the  expression  of  the 
external  objects  themselves.  Yet  these  objects,  for  the 
awakened  reason,  are  no  longer  " things  in  themselves." 
Their  contrast  with  the  world  of  "mere  ideas  "  is,  indeed, 
here  insisted  upon;  but  we  have  plainly,  so  far,  no  final 
account  of  what  the  contrast  is. 

Ill 

Yet  there  remains  one  further  aspect  of  this  whole  sit- 
uation of  our  judging  thought,  — an  aspect  upon  which 
sufficient  stress  has  not  been  laid.  We  have  said,  as 
against  this  Third  Conception  of  Being,  that  at  best  it 
leaves  Reality  too  much  a  bare  abstract  universal,  and 
does  not  assert  the  individuality  of  Being.  We  have 
still  to  express  this  objection  in  a  more  formal  way.  As 
we  have  seen,  all  our  universal  and  particular  judgments 
leave  Reality,  in  a  measure,  indeterminate.  Can  we 
tolerate  this  view  of  Reality  as  final  ? 

Ideas,  as  such,  take,  we  have  said,  the  abstractly  uni- 
versal form.  External  experience,  as  such,  in  this  realm 
where  we  find  it  sundered  from  the  internal  meanings, 
confirms  or  refutes  ideas  in  particular  cases.  But  do 


INTERNAL  AND   EXTERNAL  MEANING  OF  IDEAS     291 

ideas,  in  so  far  as  they  merely  imitate  or  seek  their  exter- 
nal Other,  ever  express  what  common  sense  often  means 
by  calling  that  external  object  an  Individual?  Or,  on 
the  other  hand,  does  the  external  experience  ever,  as 
such,  present  to  us  individuals,  and  show  them  to  us  as 
individuals  ? 1 

If  this  question  is  put  simply  as  an  appeal  to  common 
sense,  the  answer  will  be  unhesitating.  Who  does  not 
know  that  our  knowledge  "begins  with  individual 
facts?"  The  child  "knows  its  nurse  or  its  mother  or 
its  own  playthings  first.  Only  later  does  it  learn  the 
universal  characters  of  things."  The  individual,  then, 
is  the  well  known,  the  familiar,  the  first  in  Knowledge 
and  in  Being. 

This  theory,  as  usually  stated,  is  simply  full  of  incon- 
sequences and  inaccuracies  that  I  cannot  here  undertake 
to  follow  out.  Of  course,  what  a  child  first  knows  are 
objects  that  we,  with  our  common-sense  metaphysic,  call 
individual  things;  but  there  is  every  evidence  that  he 
knows  them  by  virtue  of  their  characters,  their  qualities, 
their  recognizable,  and,  for  that  very  reason,  abstractly 
universal  features.  All  animals  adjust  themselves  to  the 
what  of  their  world,  and  pursue  or  shun  objects  because 
of  their  odor,  taste,  color,  form,  touch-qualities,  fashion 
of  movement,  —  in  brief,  because  of  features  that  are  com- 
mon to  many  objects  and  experiences  and  that,  in  so  far 
as  we  can  empirically  make  out,  are  not,  except  by  acci- 
dent, confined  to  an  individual  being  or  experience.  A 

1 1  have  discussed  this  point  at  length  in  the  "  Supplementary  Essay  " 
of  the  book  called  The  Conception  of  God.  See  Part  III  of  that  Essay, 
pp.  217-271. 


292     THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

child's  early  vagueness  in  applying  names,  his  "  calling  of 
all  men  and  women  fathers  and  mothers,"1  as  Aristotle 
already  observed,  shows  that  our  primary  consciousness  is 
of  the  vaguely  universal. 

And  now,  not  only  is  this  true  as  to  the  genesis  of  our 
knowledge,  but,  to  the  end,  it  remains  true  of  us  mortals 
that,  Neither  do  our  internal  meanings  ever  present  to  us, 
nor  yet  do  our  external  experiences  ever  produce  before  us, 
for  our  inspection,  an  object  whose  individuality  we  ever 
really  know  as  such.  Neither  internal  meanings  nor  exter- 
nal meanings,  in  their  isolation,  are  in  the  least  adequate 
to  embody  individuality. 

For  an  individual  is  unique.  There  is  no  other  of  its 
individual  kind.  If  Socrates  is  an  individual,  then  there 
is  only  one  Socrates  in  the  universe.  If  you  are  an  indi- 
vidual, then  in  Reality  there  is  no  other  precisely  capable 
of  taking  your  place.  If  God  is  an  individual,  then,  as 
ethical  monotheism  began  by  saying,  There  is  no  Other. 

Now,  by  taking  note  in  thought  of  this  supposed  unique- 
ness, you  can,  of  course,  in  general,  define,  as  a  sort  of 
problem  to  be  solved  by  real  Beings,  the  ideal  and  abstract 
nature  of  individuality  itself.  But  then,  you  do  not,  in 
that  case,  tell  what  constitutes  any  one  individual  such  as 
he  is.  But  now  change  the  statement  of  the  problem. 
Try  to  define,  in  idea,  some  one  individual,  real  or  fic- 
titious, e.g.  Achilles,  or  Socrates,  or  the  universe.  At 
once,  when  you  define,  your  idea,  as  an  internal  meaning, 
presents  to  you  a  combination  of  characters  such  as,  ac- 
cording to  your  definition,  some  Other,  i.e.  some  object 
external  to  the  idea,  might  embody.  In  consequence, 
1  Aristotle,  Fhys.,  Bk.  I,  1. 


INTERNAL   AND  EXTERNAL  MEANING  OF  IDEAS     293 

however,  the  possibility  of  characterizing,  or  portraying, 
the  features  that  are  to  make  yonder  external  individual 
unique,  has  been  surrendered  in  the  very  act  of  trying  to 
define  what  constitutes  him  an  individual.  For  your 
object  is  another,  and  you  here,  by  hypothesis,  know  it 
merely  through  ideally  imitating  it  and  "corresponding" 
to  it.  But  as  individual,  the  unique  Being  is  to  be  pre- 
cisely something  that  has  no  likeness.  Hence,  just  so  far 
as  you  define  it,  you  define  of  it  everything  but  its  indi- 
viduality. Socrates  defined,  is  no  longer  the  unique 
external  meaning,  —  the  individual  Being  as  such.  He 
has  now  become  a  mere  conceived  type  of  man.  That  this 
type  has  but  one  real  expression,  you  may,  from  the  side 
of  your  internal  meanings,  dogmatically  assert  or  inevi- 
tably presuppose.  But  you  can  never  tell  what,  about 
that  kind  of  man  called  Socrates,  forbids  him  to  get 
repeated  expression  in  the  universe,  unless  you  have 
expressed  the  secret  of  Being  in  terms  different  from 
those  involved  in  this  sundering  of  the  external  and  the 
internal  meanings.  The  same  is  true  if  you  try  thus 
abstractly  to  define  what  makes  either  God  or  the  world 
One  Individual,  that  has  no  likeness. 

But  if  ideas,  as  internal  meanings  opposed  to  external 
objects,  cannot  express  the  nature  of  the  individuality  of 
the  world  or  of  any  one  Being  in  it,  whence,  then,  do  we 
ever  get  this  belief  that  Being  is,  in  fact,  individual? 
Does  perhaps  our  external  experience  present  to  us  indi- 
viduals? The  answer  is  again  simply,  No.  If,  when 
you  define  Socrates  in  inner  idea,  you  define  a  type  of 
man,  and  not  an  unique  Being  without  any  likeness,  it 
is  equally  true  that,  if  ever  you  had  an  experience  which 


294     THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

made  you  say,  Here  is  Socrates,  you  would  have  present 
to  yourself  but,  once  more,  a  type  of  empirically  observed 
man,  —  a  kind  of  experience.  When  you  daily  meet  your 
family  and  friends,  you  constantly  confirm  your  internal 
meanings  by  external  experiences ;  but  the  confirmation, 
read  accurately,  is  always  a  confirmation  of  ideal  types 
by  particular  cases,  never  by  really  individual  Beings 
directly  known  as  present  and  yet  as  unique.  You  pre- 
suppose that  your  family  and  friends  are  individual 
Beings.  The  presupposition  may  be,  yes,  to  my  mind  is, 
justifiable  in  the  light  of  a  genuine  metaphysic.  But  it 
is  an  essentially  metaphysical  presupposition,  never  veri- 
fiable by  your  external  experience.  In  this  presupposi- 
tion lies  the  very  mystery  of  Being.  The  what  is 
abstractly  universal.  The  that  is  individual.  You 
have  an  idea  of  your  friend.  You  go  to  meet  him ;  and 
lo,  the  idea  is  verified.  Yes;  but  what  is  verified?  I 
answer,  this,  that  you  have  met  a  certain  type  of  empiri- 
cal object.  "But  my  friend  is  unique.  There  is  no 
other  who  has  his  voice,  manner,  behavior."  "Yes;  but 
how  should  your  personal  experience  verify  that  ?  Have 
you  seen  all  beings  in  heaven  and  earth  ?  "  Perhaps  you 
reply,  "Yes;  but  human  experience  in  general  shows 
that  every  man  is  an  individual,  unique,  and  without 
any  absolute  likeness."  If  such  is  your  reply,  you  are 
appealing  to  general  inductive  methods.  I  admit  their 
significance.  But  I  deny  that  they  rest  solely  upon  ex- 
ternal experience,  as  such,  for  their  warrant.  They 
presuppose  a  metaphysic.  They  do  not  prove  one. 
Besides,  you  are  now  talking  of  general  principles,  and 
not  of  any  one  verified  individual. 


INTERNAL  AND  EXTERNAL  MEANING  OF  IDEAS     295 

In  fact,  how  should  any  one  individual  Being  present 
himself,  in  this  external  experience  of  yours,  or  of  all 
men  taken  together,  in  such  wise  as  to  show  not  only 
that  he  is  of  this  or  this  aspect,  but  that  no  other  is  like 
him  in  the  whole  realm  of  Being.  It  is  this  no-Other- 
character  that  persistently  baffles  both  the  merely  internal 
meaning,  and  the  merely  external  experience,  so  long  as 
they  are  human  and  are  sundered. 

And,  now,  just  this  difficulty  gives  one  further  reason 
why  our  Third  Conception  of  Being,  in  conflict  with 
common  sense,  does,  indeed,  abandon  the  concept  that 
Being  is  individual,  and  confines  itself  to  forming  in- 
ternal meanings,  and  to  confirming  them  by  external 
experience.  It  tries  to  rest  content  with  abstract  univer- 
sals,  more  or  less  determined  by  particular  observations. 

Yet,  in  doing  thus,  can  this  conception  satisfy  even  the 
fragmentary  internal  meanings  that  we  so  far  sunder  from 
their  external  objects,  and  that  we  then  seek  to  confirm 
or  to  refute  by  external  experience?  No;  for  if  we  can 
neither  abstractly  define  within,  nor  yet  empirically  find 
without,  the  individuals  that  we  seek,  there  can  be  no 
doubt  that  our  whole  interest  in  Being,  is  an  interest  in 
individuality.  For  the  Other  that  we  seek  is  that 
which,  if  found,  would  determine  our  ideas  to  their  final 
truth.  Now,  only  what  is  finally  determinate  can,  in  its 
turn,  determine.  As  a  fact,  while  we  never  abstractly 
define  individuals  as  such,  we  certainly  love  individu- 
als, believe  in  individuals,  and  regard  the  truth  with 
which  we  are  to  correspond  as  determinate.  So  much  is 
this  the  case,  that  whoever  should  try,  as,  in  fact,  our 
Third  Conception  of  Being  seems  to  try,  to  define  the 


296     THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

world  of  Being  in  terras  exclusive  of  individuality,  seems 
forced  to  say,  "The  final  fact  is  that  there  is  no  indi- 
vidual fact,  or,  in  other  words,  that  there  is  no  unique 
Being  at  all,  but  only  a  type;  so  that  the  Being  with 
which  our  thoughts  are  to  correspond  does  not  determine 
the  'mere  ideas'  to  any  single  and  unique  correspondence 
with  itself,  but  leaves  them  finally  indeterminate."  But 
is  the  Veritas  that  is  thus  left  us  any  Veritas  at  all?  Is 
not  the  very  expression  used  self-contradictory?  Can 
the  absence  of  finality  be  the  only  final  fact  ? 

Our  general  survey  of  the  world  of  judgments  and  of 
reasoning  processes,  as  well  as  of  the  accompanying  rela- 
tions between  Thought  and  Experience,  is  on  one  side 
completed.  What  have  we  learned?  Our  survey  has 
not  yet  solved  the  problem  as  to  the  whole  nature  of 
Truth,  but  has  shown  us  very  important  features  that 
must,  indeed,  belong  to  the  inmost  essence  of  the  Other 
that  we  seek.  For  one  thing,  we  have  found  that  every 
step  towards  Truth  is  a  step  away  from  vague  possibilities, 
and  towards  determinateness  of  idea  and  of  experience.  Our 
very  ideas  themselves,  even  when  expressed  as  hypothe- 
ses, or  as  universal  definitions,  or  as  a  priori  mathematical 
constructions,  or  as  judgments  of  hypothetical  or  of  uni- 
versal type,  are  from  the  outset  destructive  of  vague  pos- 
sibilities, and  involve  Determination  by  Negation.  That  is 
what  every  step  of  our  survey  has  shown.  Being,  then, 
viewed  as  Truth,  is  to  be  in  any  case  something  deter- 
minate, that  excludes  as  well  as  includes. 

As  to  the  vastly  important  relation  of  Thought  to  ex- 
ternal Experience,  we  have  seen  that  our  thought,  indeed, 
looks  to  this  external  experience  to  decide  whether  our 


INTERNAL  AND  EXTERNAL  MEANING  OF  IDEAS     297 

hypotheses  about  fact  can  be  confirmed.  But,  on  the 
other  hand,  while  external  experience,  in  confirming 
ideas,  furnishes  a  positive  content  which  our  human 
internal  meanings  never  can  construct  for  themselves, 
still  the  service  of  our  external  experience,  in  revealing 
what  is  Real,  has  perfectly  obvious  limitations.  It  can 
confirm  our  hypotheses,  but  never  adequately;  for  it 
shows  us  only  particular  instances  that  agree  with  such 
of  our  hypotheses  as  succeed.  It  can  refute  our  hasty 
ideal  generalizations,  but  only  when  they  are  stated  as 
universal  propositions.  It  can  never  by  itself  prove  a 
determinate  negative  by  excluding  from  Reality  the  whole 
of  what  our  hypotheses  have  defined.  Hence,  our  will 
has  its  limitless  opportunity  to  "try  again";  and  exter- 
nal experience  never  finally  disposes  of  ideas  unless  the 
ideas  themselves  make,  for  reasons  defensible  upon  the 
ground  of  internal  meaning  only,  their  own  "  reasonable  " 
surrender.  And,  finally,  our  experience,  whether  inter- 
nal or  external,  never  shows  us  what  we,  above  all,  regard 
as  the  Real,  namely,  the  Individual  fact.  Hence,  in 
consulting  experience,  we  are  simply  seeking  aid  in  the 
undertaking  to  give  our  ideas  a  certain  positive  deter- 
mination, to  this  content  and  no  other.  But  never,  in  our 
human  process  of  experience,  do  we  reach  that  determina- 
tion. It  is  for  us  the  object  of  love  and  of  hope,  of  desire 
and  of  will,  of  faith  and  of  work,  but  never  of  present 
finding. 

This  Individual  Determination  itself  remains,  so  far, 
the  principal  character  of  the  Real;  and  is,  as  an  ideal, 
the  Limit  towards  which  we  endlessly  aim.  Now,  a 
Limit,  in  mathematics,  may  have  either  one  or  both  of 


298     THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

two  characters.1  It  may  be  that  which  a  given  process  so 
approaches  that  we  ourselves  are  able  to  get  and  to  remain 
near  at  will  to,  —  that  is,  less  than  any  predesignated  dis- 
tance from,  —  the  limit,  although  the  process  in  question, 
by  itself,  never  reaches  the  limit.  So  we  can  get  as  near 
as  we  choose  to  2,  by  adding  terms  of  the  series  1  +  ^  +  ^, 
etc.  Or,  again,  in  the  second  place,  the  limit  may  be 
denned  as  that  which,  never  attained  by  the  process  in 
question,  is  demonstrably  a  finality  that  occupies,  in 
order,  the  first  place  immediately  beyond  the  whole  series 
of  incomplete  stages  which  the  endless  process  in  question 
defines.  Thus,  2  is  the  least  number  that  lies  beyond,  or 
that  is  greater  than  all  possible  fractions,  of  the  form 
l+l,  1  +  J+J,  1  +  i+i+J,  etc.  Usually,  in  mathe- 
matics, both  senses  of  limit  are  combined  (as  they  are  in 
the  example  just  used).  But  not  so  in  the  case  here 
before  us.  Being  is  not  an  object  that  we  men  corne 
near  at  will  to  finally  observing,  so  that  while  we  never 
get  it  wholly  present  in  our  internal  meanings,  we  can 
come  as  near  as  we  like  to  telling  all  that  it  is.  But  the 
Real,  as  our  judgments  and  empirical  investigations  seek 
it,  is  that  determinate  object  which  all  our  ideas  and 
experiences  try  to  decide  upon,  and  to  bring  within  the 
range  of  our  internal  meanings;  while,  by  the  very  nature 
of  our  fragmentary  hypotheses  and  of  our  particular  expe- 
riences, it  always  lies  Beyond. 

Yet  if  we  could  reach  that  limit  of  determination  which 

1  See  Georg  Cantor,  in  the  Zeitschrift  f.  Philosophic  und  Philosophische 
Kritik,  Bd.  91,  p.  110.  The  finite  limit  of  a  "  convergent  series "  has 
both  characters.  But  the  "determinate  infinite,"  viewed  as  the  limit  of 
the  whole-number-series,  has  only  the  latter  of  the  two  characters. 


INTERNAL  AND  EXTERNAL  MEANING  OF  IDEAS     299 

is  all  the  while  our  goal,  if  our  universal  judgments  were 
confirmed  by  an  adequate  experience,  not  of  some  object 
(still  indeterminate),  but  of  the  individual  object,  or  of 
all  the  individual  objects,  so  that  no  other  empirical  expres- 
sion of  our  ideas  remained  possible,  then,  indeed,  we 
should  stand  in  the  immediate  presence  of  the  Real. 
The  Real,  then,  is,  from  this  point  of  view,  that  which 
is  immediately  beyond  the  whole  of  our  series  of  possi- 
ble efforts  to  bring,  by  any  process  of  finite  experience 
and  of  merely  general  conception,  our  own  internal 
meaning  to  a  complete  determination. 

Abstract  as  this  result  is,  it  is  already  of  great  signifi- 
cance. It  shows  us  what  the  Third  Conception  lacks, 
namely,  a  view  of  the  Real  as  the  finally  determinate  that 
permits  no  other.  It  also  shows  that  the  mere  sundering 
of  external  and  internal  meanings  is  somehow  faulty. 
Their  linkage  is  the  deepest  fact  about  the  universe. 

And  thus  the  first  of  the  two  closing  stages  of  our  jour- 
ney is  done.  We  have  learned  how  the  internal  meaning 
is  related  to  its  own  Limit,  in  so  far  as  that  is  just  a 
limit.  But  thus  to  view  Being  is  still  not  to  take  account 
of  what  seems  to  common  sense  the  most  important  of  all 
our  relations  to  the  Real.  And  that  is  the  relation  of 
Correspondence,  —  several  times  heretofore  mentioned, 
but  not  yet  fathomed.  "  We  must  not  only  seek  Being 
as  our  goal,  but  we  must  correspond  to  its  real  constitu- 
tion if  we  are  to  get  the  truth.  And  somehow  it  has  that 
constitution.  We  have  to  submit.  The  Real  may  not 
be  wholly  independent  of  our  thinking,  but  it  is  at  least 
authoritative."  So  common  sense  states  the  case.  But 
that  aspect  of  the  matter,  as  I  repeat,  we  have  not  yet 


300     THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

fathomed.  To  complete  our  definition  of  Reality,  we 
must  undertake  to  do  so.  And  here,  at  last,  the  sunder- 
ing of  external  from  internal  meaning  receives  its  final 
test.  Must  not  that  to  which  our  thought  has  to  con- 
form, whether  it  will  or  no,  remain  wholly  external  to 
thought  itself?  We  shall  see.  And  when  we  see  this, 
our  goal  will  at  last  be  attained. 

IV 

A  time-honored  definition  of  Truth  declares  it  to  mean 
the  Correspondence  between  any  Idea  and  its  Object.  The 
mystery  that  everybody  feels  to  lie  hidden  behind  this 
definition  depends  upon  the  fact  that  two  relations,  both 
of  a  very  intangible  sort,  are  implied  by  this  definition, 
and  that  the  combination  of  these  two  relations  is  required 
to  constitute  truth.  If  an  idea  is  true,  it  must,  in  the 
first  place,  have  an  object.  But  what  constitutes  the 
relation  called  having  an  object?  When  is  an  object 
the  object  of  a  given  idea  ?  And,  secondly,  the  idea  must 
correspond  with  its  object.  But  what  is  the  relation 
called  correspondence?  Until  recently,  the  whole  theory 
of  the  nature  of  correspondence  remained  an  extremely 
undeveloped,  although  an  obviously  fundamental  con- 
ception of  Logic.  And  still  more  neglected  has  been  the 
conception  of  the  relation  that  constitutes  any  supposed 
object  the  genuine  object  of  an  idea,  whether  the  idea  be 
true  or  false.  As  to  the  problem  about  correspondence, 
how  much  must  an  idea  resemble  its  object  in  order  to  be 
true?  A  photograph  resembles  the  man  whom  it  pictures. 
Must  a  true  idea  be  even  so  a  sort  of  photograph  of  its 
object?  Or,  perhaps,  may  an  idea  be  very  unlike  an  ob- 


INTERNAL  AND  EXTERNAL  MEANING  OF  IDEAS     301 

ject,  and  still  so  correspond  therewith  as  to  be  a  true  idea? 
Are  not  the  items  in  a  ledger  very  unlike  the  commer- 
cial transactions  that  they  ideally  depict?  And  yet  may 
not  the  items  in  the  ledger  be  true?  The  nature,  then, 
and  the  degree  of  that  correspondence  between  idea  and 
object  which  is  meant  when  one  talks  of  the  truth  of  an 
idea,  is  a  doubtful  matter,  and  we  shall  have  to  consider 
it  more  closely.  As  to  the  other  one  of  these  two  prob- 
lems about  idea  and  object,  it  seems  plain,  and  in  fact 
seems  to  be  implied  in  the  very  definition  of  truth,  that 
an  idea  can  have  an  object  without  rightly  corresponding 
to  its  object.  For  how  otherwise  should  falsity  and  error 
be  possible  ?  To  have  an  object  and  to  correspond  to  it 
are  therefore  different  relations.  What,  then,  is  the 
nature  of  the  relation  that  makes  a  given  idea  such  as  to 
have  a  given  object,  whether  or  no  the  idea  truly  repre- 
sents the  object?  These  two  problems  are,  then,  the 
two  aspects  of  the  general  question,  What  is  Truth? 
regarded  now  from  the  side  of  the  correspondence 
between  internal  and  external. 

Let  us  next  attack  the  first  of  these  two  questions.  If 
an  idea  is  to  be  correspondent  to  an  object,  our  first 
impression  is  that  the  idea  must  always  possess  some  one 
predestined  sort  or  degree  of  likeness  or  similarity  to 
its  object.  Is  this  necessary?  Is  it  once  for  all  prede- 
termined that  its  object,  as  a  finished  fact,  required  the 
idea  to  be  like  it?  The  relation  of  correspondence,  in 
general,  apart  from  the  special  problem  about  ideas  and 
objects,  has  been  most  elaborately  studied  in  mathematics, 
where  correspondence  is,  in  the  most  various  forms,  a 
constant  topic  of  exact  inquiry.  If  you  have  before  you 


302     THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

two  objects,  say  two  curves,  or  two  variable  quantities, 
or  two  collections  of  objects,  —  one  of  them  a  collection 
of  symbols,  the  other  a  collection  of  objects  to  be  symbol- 
ized, —  a  relation  of  correspondence  can  be  established, 
or  assumed,  between  these  two  objects,  or  collections,  in 
the  most  manifold  and,  in  one  sense,  in  the  most  arbi- 
trary fashion.  Necessary  to  the  relations  of  correspond- 
ence is  only  this,  that  you  shall  be  able  to  view  the  two 
corresponding  objects  together,  in  a  one-to-one  relation, 
or  in  some  other  definite  way,  and,  with  some  single 
purpose  in  mind,  shall  then  be  able  in  some  one  perhaps 
very  limited  aspect  to  affirm  of  one  of  them  the  same 
that  you,  at  the  same  time  and  in  the  same  limited  sense, 
affirm  of  the  other.  In  consequence,  with  reference  to 
this  one  affirmation,  you  could  in  some  specified  wise 
substitute  one  of  them  for  the  other,  whole  for  whole, 
part  for  part,  element  for  element.  Thus,  if  you  have 
before  you  a  collection  of  counters,  and  a  collection  of 
other  objects,  you  can  make  these  collections  correspond, 
if  you  are  able  to  arrange  both  sets  of  objects  in  a  definite 
order,  and  then  to  say,  that  the  first  of  your  counters  agrees 
with  the  first  of  your  other  objects  precisely,  and  perhaps 
solely,  in  being  the  first  of  its  series;  while  the  second 
counter  agrees  with  the  second  of  the  objects  precisely  in 
being  the  second  of  the  series,  and  so  on.  The  result 
will  then  be  that  by  counting  the  counters,  you  can  after- 
wards, perhaps  more  conveniently,  enumerate  the  objects 
to  be  counted.  Ordinary  counting  depends,  in  fact,  upon 
making  the  members  of  a  number  series,  one,  two,  three, 
four,  etc.,  arbitrarily  correspond  to  the  distinguishable 
objects  of  the  collection  that  you  number.  The  result  is, 


INTERNAL  AND  EXTERNAL  MEANING  OF  IDEAS     303 

then,  that  by  adding,  subtracting,  or  otherwise  operating 
upon  the  numbers,  you  can  reach  results  that  will  be  valid 
regarding  the  objects  that  were  to  be  counted.  Again,  a 
given  plane  curve  can  be  made  to  correspond,  point  for 
point,  with  its  own  shadow,  or  with  some  other  system- 
atic projection  of  the  curve  as  made  upon  a  given  surface. 
In  this  case,  a  great  number  of  relationships  between  the 
points  of  the  curve  will  remain  true  of  the  corresponding 
points  of  the  projected  curve.  In  the  very  familiar  case 
of  a  map,  the  parts  of  the  map  correspond  to  the  parts  of 
the  object  represented,  in  a  manner  determined  by  a  par- 
ticular system  of  projection  or  of  transformation  of  object 
into  map. 

But  in  consequence  of  the  very  general  nature  of 
this  relation  of  correspondence,  two  complicated  objects, 
or  two  collections  of  objects,  may  be  made  to  correspond 
to  one  another,  part  for  part,  member  for  member,  in 
wholly  different  ways.  When  you  count  objects,  for 
instance,  it  makes  no  difference  in  what  order  you  count 
them,  or,  in  other  words,  in  what  order  you  make  them 
correspond,  object  for  object,  to  your  number  series. 
When  you  draw  maps,  you  may  use  either  Mercator's 
projection,  or  some  other  plan  of  map-making.  In  any 
case,  you  can  still  get  a  definite  correspondence  of  map 
and  object,  part  for  part,  although,  by  varying  the  plan 
of  projection  followed,  you  may  vary  the  way  in  which 
the  correspondence  used  in  any  one  case  will  prove  use- 
ful in  measuring  distances,  or  in  plotting  courses  on  the 
map  once  drawn.  Any  sort  of  correspondence  thus 
always  fulfils  one  definite  purpose,  such  as  the  purpose  of 
counting,  of  map-drawing  upon  some  special  plan,  or  of 


304     THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

constructing  projections  of  curves,  or  of  otherwise  sys* 
tematically  transforming  one  set  of  relationships  into 
another  set.  But  if  this  special  purpose  is  fulfilled,  the 
correspondence  in  question  is  accomplished,  and  is  said 
to  hold  true.  But  in  any  case,  as  you  now  see,  corre- 
spondence does  not  necessarily  imply,  just  as  it  does  not 
exclude,  any  such  common  characters  in  the  two  corre- 
sponding objects,  as  makes  you  say  that  one  of  the  two 
objects  resembles  the  other  in  mere  external  appearance. 
A  photograph  looks  like  the  man;  a  map  may  look,  in 
outline,  like  the  land  mapped.  But  numbers  and  the 
symbols  of  an  algebra  no  longer  seem  to  our  senses  at  all 
like  the  objects  defined  by  these  symbolic  devices  for 
establishing  correspondence;  and  the  accounts  in  the 
ledger,  while  very  systematically  corresponding,  item  for 
item,  to  the  commercial  transactions,  are  very  unlike 
them  in  immediate  interest  and  in  sensible  appearance. 
There  is,  then,  no  degree  of  unlikeness  in  appearance 
between  two  objects  which  excludes  a  correspondence  — 
and  even  the  most  exact  and  instructive  sort  of  corre- 
spondence —  between  one  object  and  the  other.  What  is 
involved  in  correspondence  is  the  possession,  on  the  part 
of  the  corresponding  objects,  of  some  system  of  ideally 
definable  characters  that  is  common  to  both  of  them,  that 
is,  for  the  purposes  of  our  thought,  the  same  in  both  of 
them,  and  that  is  such  as  to  meet  the  systematic  purpose 
for  which  the  particular  correspondence  is  established. 

So  much,  then,  for  the  relation  of  correspondence, 
viewed  by  itself.  If  we  apply  this  consideration  to  the 
case  of  the  definition  of  truth,  we  see  that,  for  the  first, 
a  true  idea,  in  corresponding  to  its  object,  need  not  in  the 


INTERNAL  AND  EXTERNAL  MEANING  OF  IDEAS     305 

least  be  confined  to  any  particular  sort  or  degree  of  gen- 
eral similarity  to  its  object.  The  similarity  may  be  as 
close  or  as  remote,  as  sensuously  interesting  or  as  ab- 
stractly formal  as  you  please.  A  scientific  idea  about 
colors  need  not  be  itself  a  color,  nor  yet  an  image  involv- 
ing colors.  Or,  to  state  the  case  in  a  very  crude  instance, 
a  true  idea  of  a  dog  need  not  itself  bark  in  order  to  be 
true.  On  the  contrary,  photographs,  and  wax  images, 
and  toy  dogs  that  bark,  may  correspond  to  the  imitated 
objects  in  fashions  that  are  of  very  little  use  in  fram- 
ing such  ideas  as  are  at  once  of  scientific  grade  and 
of  a  given  desired  type  of  correspondence  to  their  ob- 
jects. The  photographs,  to  be  sure,  help  one  to  form 
scientifically  valuable  ideas  far  more  frequently  than  does 
a  wax  image.  But  you  cannot  photograph  the  solar  sys- 
tem, nor  yet  the  constitution  of  a  molecule.  Yet  you 
may  have  symbolically  expressed  ideas  that  correspond 
much  more  exactly  to  certain  special  truths  about  the 
solar  system  and  the  molecule  than  any  ordinary  photo- 
graphs ever  correspond  to  even  the  most  important  visible 
features  of  certain  of  their  objects.  The  modern  X-ray 
photographs  very  crudely  reveal  the  internal  structure  of 
certain  solid  objects;  but  a  trained  student  of  anatomy 
of  the  brain  has  largely  symbolic  ideas  of  its  structure 
which  far  exceed,  in  value  of  their  correspondence  to 
their  object,  all  that  can  ever  be  hoped  for  from  the  X-ray 
photographs  of  a  brain.  In  general,  the  photograph  gives 
us  at  its  best  very  one-sided  ideas  of  visible  objects.  It 
is  the  aim  of  science  to  win  ideas  that  intimately  corre- 
spond, in  however  symbolic  a  fashion,  to  certain  desired 
aspects  of  the  structure  of  their  objects ;  and  without  sys- 


306     THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF   BEING 

terns  of  such  more  symbolic  ideas  to  aid  in  our  interpreta- 
tion of  what  we  at  any  time  merely  see,  such  sensible 
ideas  as  photographs  suggest  remain,  in  general,  very 
imperfect  beginnings  of  a  scientific  insight  into  objects. 

But  what,  then,  is  the  test  of  the  truthful  correspond- 
ence of  an  idea  to  its  object,  if  object  and  idea  can  differ 
so  widely?  The  only  answer  is  in  terms  of  Purpose. 
The  idea  is  true  if  it  possesses  the  sort  of  correspondence 
to  its  object  that  the  idea  itself  wants  to  possess.  Unless 
that  kind  of  identity  in  inner  structure  between  idea  and 
object  can  be  found  which  the  specific  purpose  embodied 
in  a  given  idea  demands,  the  idea  is  false.  On  the  other 
hand,  if  this  particular  sort  of  identity  is  to  be  found,  the 
idea  is  just  in  so  far  true.  The  identity  that  suffices  to 
establish  a  sufficient  correspondence  must,  then,  be,  like 
the  identity  found  in  two  correspondent  curves  (as,  for 
instance,  in  a  given  curve  and  in  its  projection),  or  like 
the  identity  discoverable  when  you  compare  the  map  with 
the  region  to  which  the  map  corresponds,  —  it  must  be, 
I  say,  an  identity  serving  some  conscious  end,  fulfilling 
an  intent,  possessing  a  value  for  your  will.  Such  iden- 
tity is,  in  the  more  abstract  sciences,  often  confined  to  an 
agreement  in  certain  very  general  relationships.  It  is, 
then,  usually  the  sort  of  identity  that  the  scholastics 
often  called  analogy,  i.e.  equivalence  merely  as  to  the  com- 
mon possession  of  certain  relationships  which  permit  the 
idea,  for  a  specific  purpose,  as  in  a  computation,  a  calcu- 
lus, or  in  any  system  of  ideal  constructive  processes,  to 
act  as  a  substitute,  to  take  the  place  of  its  object.  But 
the  identity  desired  may,  indeed,  also  be  of  a  more  sen- 
suous type.  If  so,  then,  indeed,  the  idea  must  sensuously 


INTERNAL  AND  EXTERNAL  MEANING  OF  IDEAS     307 

resemble  its  object.  The  desired  identity  may,  as  in  a 
case  of  a  photograph,  involve  visible  similarities.  So 
the  visual  image  of  your  absent  friend  may,  indeed, 
resemble  him  in  seeming,  and  the  desired  identity  may, 
as  in  the  ideas  that  accompany  the  actions  of  people  who 
sing  or  who  play  in  concert,  involve  musically  interesting 
agreements  and  harmonies.  Or,  again,  your  idea  may  be 
one  that,  like  the  sympathetic  ideas  with  which  two 
friends  accompany  each  other's  sentiments,  intends  to 
involve  an  identity  in  emotional  attitudes.  But  however 
the  intention  varies,  always  the  test  of  truth  is  the  same. 
Is  the  correspondence  reached  between  idea  and  object 
the  precise  correspondence  that  the  idea  itself  intended? 
If  it  is,  the  idea  is  true.  If  it  is  not,  the  idea  is  in  so 
far  false.  Thus  it  is  not  mere  agreement,  but  intended 
agreement,  that  constitutes  truth. 

Do  you  want  the  image  to  look  like  its  object  ?  If  so, 
your  mental  image  is  a  true  idea  when,  like  the  photo- 
graph, it  looks  like  its  object;  and  it  is  a  false  represent- 
ative of  its  object  if,  like  a  poor  visual  image,  it  is  dim, 
blurred,  and,  for  its  representative  purpose,  consequently 
deceitful.  But  do  you  want  your  idea,  like  a  series  of 
numbers,  or  like  a  statistical  diagram,  or  like  a  certain 
mathematical  transformation  of  given  curves  and  surfaces, 
not  to  look  like  its  object,  but  to  have  a  wholly  different 
sort  of  correspondence,  member  for  member,  part  for  part, 
point  for  point,  relation  for  relation,  to  its  object?  Then, 
not  similarity  of  sensible  seeming,  but  precisely  the  ful- 
filment of  whatever  intent  was  in  mind,  is  the  test  of  the 
truth  of  the  idea.  And,  then,  the  idea  would  be  false  in 
case  it  did  look  too  much  like  its  object.  Do  you  intend 


308     THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

to  sing  in  tune?  Then  your  musical  ideas  are  false  if 
they  lead  you  to  strike  what  are,  then,  called  false  notes. 
But  do  you  want  to  study  acoustics?  Then  your  ideas 
of  sound  are  false  unless  they  involve  correct  inner  con- 
structions of  the  physical  relations  of  sound  waves,  and 
that,  too,  however  fine  your  musical  skill,  and  however 
vivid  and  accurate  your  musical  imagination  may  be. 
In  that  case  mere  accurate  images  of  tones  would  be  false 
acoustical  ideas. 

In  vain,  then,  does  one  stand  apart  from  the  internal 
meaning,  from  the  conscious  inner  purpose  embodied  in  a 
given  idea,  and  still  attempt  to  estimate  whether  or  no 
that  idea  corresponds  with  its  object.  There  is  no  purely 
external  criterion  of  truth.  You  cannot  merely  look  from 
without  upon  an  ideal  construction  and  say  whether  or 
no  it  corresponds  to  its  object.  Every  finite  idea  has 
to  be  judged  by  its  own  specific  purpose.  Ideas  are  like 
tools.  They  are  there  for  an  end.  They  are  true,  as  the 
tools  are  good,  precisely  by  reason  of  their  adjustment  to 
this  end.  To  ask  me  which  of  two  ideas  is  the  more 
nearly  true,  is  like  asking  me  which  of  two  tools  is  the 
better  tool.  The  question  is  a  sensible  one  if  the  purpose 
in  mind  is  specific,  but  not  otherwise.  One  razor  can 
be  superior  to  another.  But  let  a  man  ask,  Is  a  razor  a 
better  or  worse  tool  than  a  hammer?  Is  a  steam-engine 
a  better  mechanism  than  a  loom?  Such  questions  are 
obviously  vain,  just  because  they  suggest  that  there  is 
some  one  purely  abstract  test  of  the  value  of  any  and  all 
tools,  or  some  one  ideal  tool  that,  if  you  had  it,  would 
be  good  apart  from  any  specific  use.  Yet  there  are 
philosophers  who  ask,  and  even  suppose  themselves  to 


INTERNAL  AND  EXTERNAL  MEANIXG  OF  IDEAS     309 

answer,  questions  about  the  truth  of  ideas  that  are  just 
as  vain  as  this. 

When  Mr.  Spencer,  according  to  the  tradition  of  the 
long  series  of  thinkers  whom  he  in  this  respect  follows, 
speaks,  in  a  well-known  passage,  of  "symbolic"  ideas  as 
essentially  inferior  in  the  conscious  definiteness  of  their 
truth  to  ideas  whose  relation  to  their  objects  we  can 
directly  picture,  he  applies  a  criterion  to  the  testing  of 
ideas  which  is  as  crude  as  if  one  should  argue  that  a  razor 
is  not  as  good  a  tool  as  a  hammer,  because,  forsooth,  the 
test  of  a  tool  shall  be  its  weight,  or  the  amount  of  noise 
that  you  can  make  when  you  use  it.  Many  admirable 
ideas  are,  indeed,  of  the  type  of  mental  pictures.  That 
is  not  only  obvious,  but  worth  remembering.  There  is 
no  reason  why  such  images  should  not  be  both  valid  and 
important.  Sensuous  experience  may  show  you  many 
sorts  of  truth  that  we  cannot  at  present  otherwise  ex- 
press. A  man  who  sees  a  photograph  sees  truth,  if  he  is 
intelligent  enough  to  observe  it.  A  man  who  sings  a 
tune  sings  truth,  if  he  is  thoughtful  enough  to  know 
what  he  is  doing.  And  imageless  abstractions,  or  alge- 
braic symbols,  are,  indeed,  not  true  by  reason  of  their 
mere  poverty  of  sensuous  life.  But,  on  the  other  hand, 
algebraic  symbols  are,  for  precisely  the  purposes  of  alge- 
bra, actually  superior,  as  representations  of  objects,  to  any 
pictures  of  these  objects.  And  this  is  not  because  by  any 
chance  we  cannot  picture  the  objects,  but  because,  for  this 
end,  the  symbols  are  truer  than  the  pictures.  The  con- 
structions of  mathematics  are  oftener  like  razors,  ideal 
tools  that  are  all  the  better  for  their  lack  of  bulk  and 
grossness,  and  for  the  almost  invisible  fineness  of  their 


310     THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

edge.  When  you  count,  it  is  symbols  that  you  want, 
not  pictures.  Hence,  the  numbers  are  for  your  purpose 
superior  to  photographs;  and  the  entries  in  the  ledger 
give  a  better  record  of  their  own  aspect  of  the  commer- 
cial transactions  than  a  legion  of  phonographs  and  kineto- 
scopes,  set  up  in  a  shop  to  record  transactions,  could,  by 
any  perfection  of  literal  reproductions,  retain.  Symbols, 
then,  are  not  in  the  least  less  definitely  and,  on  occasion, 
less  obviously,  consciously,  empirically  true,  or  corre- 
spondent to  their  objects,  than  are,  for  their  own  purpose, 
the  most  vivid  of  mental  pictures.  An  idea,  again,  is 
true,  as  a  chess  player  is  skilful,  or  as  an  artist  is  power- 
ful, or  as  a  practical  man  is  effective.  The  question 
always  is,  Can  the  player  win  his  chosen  game,  the  artist 
succeed  in  his  own  selected  art,  the  practical  man  accom- 
plish his  own  task,  and  not  the  task  of  some  other  man  ? 
And  precisely  so  the  question  is,  Does  the  idea  win  in  its 
own  deliberately  chosen  game  of  correspondence  to  its 
object? 

And  so  we  conclude  that  the  object  does  not,  as  a  fin- 
ished fact,  predetermine  the  sort  of  likeness  that  the  idea 
must  possess  in  order  to  be  true.  It  is  the  idea  that  so 
far  decides  its  own  meaning.  And  I  may  once  more 
point  out  that  in  all  this  you  may  see  afresh  why,  from 
the  opening  lecture  of  this  course,  I  have  laid  such 
stress  upon  the  essentially  teleological  inner  structure  of 
conscious  ideas,  and  why  I  defined  ideas  as  I  did  in  our 
opening  lecture,  namely,  as  cases  where  conscious  states 
more  or  less  completely  present  the  embodiment,  the  rela- 
tive fulfilment  of  a  present  purpose.  Whatever  else  our 
ideas  are,  and  however  much  or  little  they  may  be,  at  any 


INTERNAL  AND  EXTERNAL  MEANING  OF  IDEAS     311 

moment,  expressed  in  rich,  sensuous  imagery,  it  is  cer- 
tain that  they  are  ideas  not  because  they  are  masses  or 
series  of  images,  but  because  they  embody  present  con- 
scious purposes.  Every  idea  is  as  much  a  volitional 
process  as  it  is  an  intellectual  process.  It  may  well  or 
ill  represent  or  correspond  to  something  not  itself,  but  it 
must,  in  any  case,  make  more  or  less  clearly  articulate 
its  own  present  purpose.  The  constructive  character  of 
all  mathematical  ideas,  the  sense  of  current  control  which 
accompanies  all  definite  thinking  processes,  the  momen- 
tary purposes  more  or  less  imperfectly  fulfilled  whenever 
we  conceive  anything,  —  these  are  evidences  of  what  is 
essential  to  processes  of  ideation.  Volition  is  as  mani- 
fest in  counting  objects  as  in  singing  tunes,  in  conceiv- 
ing physical  laws  as  in  directing  the  destinies  of  nations, 
in  laboratory  experiments  as  in  artistic  productions,  in 
contemplating  as  in  fighting.  The  embodied  purpose, 
the  internal  meaning,  of  the  instant's  act,  is  thus  a  con- 
ditio  sine  qua  non  for  all  external  meaning  and  for  all 
truth.  What  we  are  now  inquiring  is  simply  how  an 
internal  meaning  can  be  linked  to  an  external  meaning, 
how  a  volition  can  also  possess  truth,  how  the  purpose  of 
the  instant  can  express  the  nature  of  an  object  other  than 
the  instant's  purpose. 


So  much,  then,  for  the  relation  of  correspondence 
between  idea  and  object.  But,  now,  when  has  an  idea 
an  object  at  all?  This  question,  as  I  before  observed, 
has  been  decidedly  more  neglected  in  fundamental  dis- 
cussions about  truth  than  has  the  question  as  to  the 


312     THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF   BEING 

nature  of  the  desired  correspondence  to  the  object.  That 
which  makes  an  object  the  object  of  a  given  idea  has  too 
frequently  been  considered  from  the  side  of  an  accepted 
and  uncriticised  ontological,  or,  possibly,  psychological 
theory  as  to  the  causation  and  origin  of  ideas.  The  object 
of  any  idea  is,  for  many  of  the  older  theories  of  knowl- 
edge, that  which  arouses,  awakens,  brings  to  pass,  the 
idea  in  question.  The  old  Aristotelian  metaphor  of  the 
seal  impressing  its  form  upon  the  wax  is  here  the  familiar 
means  of  exemplifying  how  an  object  becomes  such  by 
impressing  its  nature  upon  the  ideas  that  it  arouses. 
The  sun  shines,  a  light  enters  a  man's  eyes,  and  the  man, 
looking  up,  sees  the  sun.  Thereupon  the  sun  becomes 
the  object  of  his  ideas.  One  touches  and  handles  objects ; 
they  impress  upon  him  their  solidity  and  their  tangible 
form.  Thereupon  they  furnish  the  basis  for  further  ideas. 
Or,  again,  a  distant  object  is  dimly  seen.  It  comes 
nearer  and  nearer,  and  is  found  to  be  some  particular 
object.  When  it  was  distant  it  was  already  the  object  of 
ideas,  because,  affecting  one's  sense  of  sight,  it  roused 
curiosity.  As  it  approaches,  these  ideas  are  confirmed 
or  refuted  by  further  observation,  and,  according  to  the 
sort  of  correspondence  with  their  object  that  they  under- 
took to  have,  they  then  turn  out  to  be  true  or  false. 

In  all  such  accounts  of  the  relation  of  idea  and  object,  the 
existence  of  the  object  is  presupposed  as  something  well 
understood.  And  not  only  is  this  presupposition  made, 
but  the  whole  existence  of  the  so-called  external  world, 
the  existence,  too,  of  the  relation  called  the  relation  of 
causality  between  the  object  and  the  perceiving  subject, 
yes,  the  very  Being  of  the  subject  itself,  as  an  entity  that 


INTERNAL  AND  EXTERNAL  MEANING  OF  IDEAS     313 

is  supposed  to  be  by  nature  apt  to  perceive  objects  when 
it  is  awakened  through  their  presence,  —  all  these  very 
important  ontological  conceptions  are  assumed  in  order 
to  define  the  special  conditions  under  which  a  given 
object  becomes  the  object  of  the  ideas  of  a  given  person. 
Now,  of  course,  we  are  not  concerned  here  either  to 
accept  or  to  refute  these  presuppositions  of  so  many 
theories  of  knowledge.  We  have  only  in  passing  to 
observe  that  these  theories  cannot  help  us  in  our  present 
inquiry.  We  are  now  asking  what  is,  by  the  Being  of 
anything  whatever,  by  the  very  Reality  that  one  attrib- 
utes to  world  or  to  soul,  to  causality  or  to  sense  organs. 
In  pursuing  this  inquiry  we  have  been  led  to  a  point 
where  the  reality  of  things  means  for  us  some  condition  or 
ground,  whatever  it  be,  —  whether  conscious  or  extra- 
conscious  we  know  not  yet,  —  some  genuine  basis  or  guar- 
antee which  gives  to  our  ideas  their  truth.  We  have  thus 
been  led  to  ask  directly,  What  is  Truth?  Into  this  ques- 
tion our  question,  What  is  Being?  has  transformed  itself. 
The  word  "Truth,"  however,  appears,  in  traditional 
language,  as  a  name  for  something  called  the  correspond- 
ence of  an  idea  with  an  object.  And  thus  it  is  that  we 
have  been  brought  to  face  the  problem,  When  has  an  idea 
an  object?  Our  effort  at  present  is  to  see  whether  we 
cannot  define  the  Being  of  things  by  first  defining  their 
relation,  as  objects,  to  ideas.  We  cannot,  then,  hope  to 
define,  for  our  present  purpose,  the  character  of  our  objects, 
viewed  as  objects  of  ideas,  by  first  presupposing  their 
Being,  and  the  Being  of  the  whole  physical  world.  No 
doubt  there  is  this  world,  —  but  in  what  sense  it  is,  that 
is  precisely  our  problem. 


314     THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

Moreover,  the  view  that  in  order  to  be  object  of  a  given 
idea,  the  object  must  be  cause  of  the  idea,  or  that  ideas 
have  to  look  to  their  own  causes  as  their  objects,  is  re- 
futed, as  a  general  definition,  by  a  glance  at  the  nature  of 
all  those  temporal  objects  of  which  we  have  ideas,  but 
which  are  not  now  present  in  time.  Is  anything  in  the 
future,  say  my  own  death,  or  an  eclipse  due  next  year,  or 
futurity  in  general,  the  cause  of  my  present  ideas,  true  or 
false,  that  refer  to  any  such  object.  When  I  form  a  plan, 
or  sign  a  contract,  the  hypothetical  future  event  defined 
by  the  plan  or  contemplated  in  the  contract  is  said,  in 
the  familiar  Aristotelian  phraseology,  to  be  the  final 
cause  of  the  present  act,  but  it  certainly  is  not  a  cause 
impressing  itself  upon  knowledge  as  the  seal  imprints  its 
form  upon  the  wax.  Yet  Aristotle,  to  whom  final  causa- 
tion meant  at  bottom  everything,  also  loves  far  too  much 
the  trivial  seal  and  wax  metaphor  as]  his  customary 
means  for  defining  the  general  relations  of  object  and 
idea;  so  much  deeper  was  Aristotle's  thought  than  his 
phraseology  !  Even  the  Nous  of  Aristotle  knows  through 
some  sort  of  so-called  touching  of  its  intelligible  objects. 

But  if  one  attempts  to  escape  from  these  just-men- 
tioned considerations  about  the  future  objects  of  present 
ideas,  by  declaring  that  the  future  has  as  yet  no  real 
Being  at  all,  and  that  it  therefore  is  no  real,  but  only  an 
imagined,  object  of  present  ideas,  I  should,  indeed,  not 
in  the  least  accept  the  objection  as  valid,  but  I  should  for 
the  moment  only  ask  the  objector  what  he  thinks  about 
the  whole  realm  of  past  Being.  The  most  noticeable  fea- 
ture of  the  past  is  that  it  is  irrevocable.  This  character 
of  the  past,  viz.,  that  it  is  gone  beyond  recall,  is  regarded 


INTERNAL  AND  EXTERNAL  MEANING  OF  IDEAS     315 

by  us  all  as  objectively  valid  ;  and  so  it  is  the  object  of 
present  ideas.  But  now  I  ask,  in  all  seriousness,  what  is 
the  irrevocable  past  now  doing  to  our  ideas  that  the  fact 
of  its  irrevocable  absence  should,  as  cause,  now  be  viewed 
as  moulding  our  ideas  ?  By  means  of  what  stamping  pro- 
cess is  the  seal  of  the  past  impressing  its  form  upon  the 
wax  of  the  present  ideas  ?  The  irrevocable  character  of 
the  past  is  a  fact  that  can  become  object  of  an  idea  only 
by  not  being  any  present  cause  of  ideas  at  all,  since  to  be 
irrevocable  means  to  be  temporally  over  and  done  with 
altogether.  If  one  says,  "But  past  events  were  the 
causes  that  have  led  to  present  events,  and  that  is  why 
we  now  have  ideas  of  the  past,"  then  I  should  reply: 
"  You  miss  the  point  altogether ;  not  in  so  far  as  they 
occurred,  and  were  causes  that  led  up  to  present  events, 
not  in  so  far  as  they  were  real  causes  at  all,  but  in  so  far 
as  they  can  never  occur  again,  are  those  past  events  now 
viewed  as  irrevocable."  Yet  to  say,  "Those  past  events 
can  never  occur  again,"  is  to  utter  an  objective  truth,  un- 
less indeed  all  our  human  view  of  time  is  false.  But  how 
can  the  mere  truth  that  an  event  can  never  occur  again 
be  a  cause  at  all  ?  Still  more,  how  can  it  cause  me  to 
have  ideas  of  itself  ?  What,  once  more,  does  the  irrevo- 
cableness  of  the  past  do  to  me  when  I  think  of  it  ?  Or 
do  you  say,  "Our  idea  of  the  irrevocable  character  of 
the  past  is  in  truth  only  a  sort  of  generalization  from  our 
many  experiences  of  physically  irrevocable  happenings, 
such  as  the  breaking  of  china,  the  spilling  of  milk,  the 
flight  of  youth,  and  all  the  other  proverbial  instances  of 
the  past  that  return  not "  ?  Then  I  answer  :  If  our  idea 
that  the  past  is  wholly  irrevocable  were  the  result  of  such 


316     THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

empirical  instances,  —  if,  I  say,  this  explanation,  which  I 
hold  to  be  false,  were  correct,  all  the  more  would  it  be 
plain  that  what  causes  an  idea  is  not,  as  such,  the  object 
of  the  idea,  for  it  is  not  of  broken  china,  nor  of  spilled 
milk,  nor  even  of  lost  youth  that  one  thinks  in  announc- 
ing the  view  that  the  past  is  irrevocable,  —  but  of  what 
one  supposes  to  be  an  universal  law  of  all  time,  which  one 
applies  as  well  to  the  repeated  sequence  of  the  monoto- 
nous beats  of  the  pendulum,  or  to  the  waves  that  break 
over  and  over  upon  the  beach,  as  to  youth,  or  even  to 
death.  For  even  of  the  monotonously  repeated  series  of 
events,  one  asserts  that  each  individual  case  of  the  repeti- 
tion is  irrevocable  when  past.  Even  if  one's  view  as  to 
this  matter  were  false,  one's  object  would  here  be  a  char- 
acter of  the  whole  of  time,  and  a  character  which  is  cer- 
tainly no  cause  of  present  ideas. 

It  is  hopeless,  then,  to  persist  in  the  hypothesis  that  the 
object  of  an  idea  is  as  such  the  cause  of  the  idea.  Were  one 
to  persist  in  such  a  view,  what  would  he  say  about  all  the 
mathematical  objects?  Does  the  binomial  theorem  act 
as  a  seal,  or  any  other  sort  of  cause,  impressing  its  image 
on  the  wax  of  a  mathematician's  mind  ?  Do  the  proper- 
ties of  equations  do  anything  to  the  mathematician  when 
he  thinks  of  them  ?  Is  not  all  the  fresh  creative  activity 
in  this  case  his  own  ? 

VI 

Nearer  to  our  desired  definition  we  may  come  if  we 
next  observe  the  reason  for  the  plausibility  of  the  usual 
appeal  to  the  objects  of  vision  and  touch  as  the  typical 
cases  of  objects  of  ideas.  For,  in  fact,  nobody  can  doubt 


INTERNAL  AND  EXTERNAL  MEANING  OF  IDEAS     317 

that  the  pen  in  my  hand,  or  the  sun  in  the  heavens,  or  the 
sail  on  the  horizon,  may  be  genuine  objects  of  ideas  ;  and 
why  do  these  instances  seem  so  typical  of  the  whole  rela- 
tion of  idea  and  object  ?  I  answer,  because,  in  case  of 
these  objects,  a  very  typical  feature  of  the  relation  of 
idea  and  object  is  indeed  manifest  enough.  That  an  idea 
has  an  object  depends  at  least  in  part  upon  this,  that  the 
idea  selects  its  object.  And  selection  is  manifested  in 
consciousness  by  what  is  usually  called  attention,  while 
attention  to  objects  of  sense  is  something  very  obvious 
and  easy  to  estimate.  Into  the  intricacies  of  the  psycho- 
logical theory  of  attention,  we  have  not  here  to  go. 
Enough,  one  who  attends,  whatever  the  causal  explana- 
tion of  his  process,  is,  as  to  the  nature  and  trend  of  his 
meaning,  selective.  And  the  ideas  of  an  attentive  con- 
sciousness are  the  embodiments  of  such  selection.  What- 
ever type  or  correspondence  is  involved  in  the  purpose  of 
a  given  idea,  it  is  then  not  enough,  in  case  you  wish  to 
confirm  or  to  refute  the  idea,  that  you  should  point  out 
how  the  desired  correspondence  is  to  be  found,  or  fails  to 
be  found,  anywhere  that  you  please  or  anywhere  at  random 
in  the  world.  For  the  idea  must  be  confirmed  or  refuted 
by  comparison  with  the  object  that  the  idea  itself  means, 
selects,  views  with  attentive  expectation,  determines  as  its 
own  object.  And  while  this  selection  is  not  merely  a 
subjective  matter,  left  to  the  mere  caprice  of  the  idea  it- 
self, certain  it  is,  that  in  order  to  find  out  what  the  truth 
of  a  man's  ideas  is,  you  must  take  account  not  merely  of 
the  sort  of  correspondence  that  he  intends  to  attain  in  the 
presence  of  his  object,  but  of  the  selection  that  he  himself 
has  made  of  the  object  by  which  he  wishes  his  idea  to  be 


318     THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

judged.  Now  this  selection  involves  what  we  have  called 
the  inner  meaning  of  the  idea.  Just  as  truly  as  the  sort 
of  correspondence  by  which  an  idea  is  to  be  judged  is  pre- 
determined by  the  internal  meaning  of  the  idea,  just  so 
truly  is  the  internal  meaning  of  the  idea  also  to  be  con- 
sulted regarding  the  intended  selection  of  the  object.  If 
I  have  meant  to  make  an  assertion  about  Csesar,  you  must 
not  call  me  to  account  because  my  statement  does  not 
correspond,  in  the  intended  way,  with  the  object  called 
Napoleon.  If  I  have  meant  to  say  that  space  has  three 
dimensions,  you  cannot  refute  me  by  pointing  out  that 
time  has  only  one.  And  nowhere,  without  a  due  exam- 
ination of  the  internal  meaning  of  my  ideas,  can  you  learn 
whether  it  was  the  object  Csesar  or  the  object  Napoleon, 
whether  it  was  space  or  time,  that  I  meant. 

Our  preference,  however,  for  the  objects  of  sense,  for 
the  pen,  and  the  sun,  as  typical  instances  of  objects  of 
ideas,  arises  from  the  fact  that  in  case  of  just  these  ob- 
jects, it  is  especially  easy,  by  observing,  from  without,  the 
acts  of  the  person  who  has  these  ideas,  to  form  confident 
and,  for  common-sense  purposes,  relatively  exact  notions 
of  the  selection  to  which  the  internal  meaning  of  the 
ideas  has  bound  the  maker  of  any  given  judgment  about 
objects.  Moreover,  it  is  easy  for  us  ourselves  to  follow 
our  sense-ideas  and  their  objects  with  continuous  scrutiny 
and  to  observe  their  relations.  For  sense-objects  are 
vivid,  and  combine  relative  permanence  with  the  sort  of 
plasticity  that  enables  us  to  get  what  we  call  nearer  or, 
in  general,  novel  views  of  them ;  so  that  in  passing  back 
and  forth  from  idea  to  object,  we  seem  assured  of  some 
definite  relation  between  them.  And  our  acts  in  dealing 


ETERNAL  AND  EXTERNAL  MEANING  OF  IDEAS     319 

with  the  objects  of  sense  are  correspondingly  definite,  so 
that  observers  easily  judge  what  object  we  mean. 

Yet  precisely  what  this  relation  of  object  and  idea  is, 
we  are  still  called  upon  to  explain,  even  in  case  of  the 
most  obvious  object  of  sense,  and  still  more  in  case  of 
objects  of  a  more  subtle  character,  such  as  past  events, 
valid  laws,  and  mathematical  constructions. 

Plain,  so  far,  are  two  considerations  :  First,  the  object 
of  an  idea  is  in  somewise  predetermined,  is  selected  from 
all  other  objects,  through  the  sort  of  attentive  interest  in 
just  that  object  which  the  internal  meaning  of  the  idea 
involves.  Unless  the  idea  is  thus  selective,  it  can  never 
come  to  be  either  true  or  false.  For  if  it  means  to  be 
true,  it  intends  a  sort  of  correspondence  with  an  object. 
What  correspondence  it  intends  is  determined,  as  we  saw, 
solely  by  the  purpose  which  the  idea  embodies,  i.e.  by  the 
internal  meaning  of  the  idea.  Furthermore,  the  idea 
intends  to  attain  this  correspondence  to  some  particular 
object,  —  not  to  any  object  you  please,  not  to  whatever 
happens  to  correspond  to  the  ideal  construction  in  ques- 
tion, but  to  a  determined  object.  The  determination  of 
what  object  is  meant,  is,  therefore,  certainly  again  due, 
in  one  aspect,  to  the  internal  meaning  of  the  idea.  No- 
body else  can  determine  for  me  what  object  I  mean  by 
my  idea. 

But  hereupon  we  seem  to  face,  indeed,  a  fatal  difficulty, 
For  the  second  of  the  two  considerations  just  mentioned 
remains.  And  this  is  that,  if  the  idea  predetermines 
what  object  it  selects  as  the  one  that  it  means,  just  as  it 
predetermines  what  sort  of  correspondence  it  intends  to 
have  to  this  object,  the  idea,  nevertheless,  does  not  prede- 


320    THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS   OF  BEING 

termine  whether  its  object  is  such  that  the  idea,  if  finite, 
shall  succeed  in  attaining  entire  agreement  with  the 
object.  Otherwise  truth  would  be  mere  tautology,  error 
would  be  excluded  in  advance,  and  it  would  be  useless 
even  to  talk  of  an  object  external  in  any  sense  to  the 
idea. 

VII 

Here,  then,  is  the  central  dilemma  as  to  the  nature  of 
truth.  I  may  state  it  once  more,  but  now  in  the  form  of 
an  antinomy ;  that  is,  in  the  familiar  shape  of  the  Kan- 
tian Antinomies,  with  thesis  and  antithesis.  To  be  sure, 
the  antinomy  will  be  imperfect.  On  one  side  will  stand 
a  stubborn,  but  no  doubt  somehow  incompletely  stated, 
apparent  truth.  On  the  other  side  will  stand  an  obvious 
and  demonstrable  certainty.  We  shall  have  to  reconcile 
an  opposition  that  can  be  but  apparent. 

The  thesis  of  our  antinomy  is  as  follows  :  There 
seems  to  be,  in  the  object  of  an  idea,  just  in  so  far  as  it 
is  the  object  of  that  specific  idea,  no  essential  character 
which  is  not  predetermined  by  the  purpose,  the  internal 
meaning,  the  conscious  intent,  of  that  idea  itself. 

For  consider:  An  object,  as  we  have  seen,  has  two 
relations  to  an  idea.  The  one  is  the  relation  that  con- 
stitutes it  the  object  meant  by  that  idea.  The  other 
is  the  sort  of  correspondence  that  is  to  obtain  between 
object  and  idea.  As  to  the  first  of  these  two:  An 
object  is  not  the  object  of  a  given  idea  merely  because 
the  object  causes  the  idea,  or  impresses  itself  upon 
the  idea  as  the  seal  impresses  the  wax.  For  there 
are  objects  of  ideas  that  are  not  causes  of  the  ideas 


INTERNAL  AND   EXTERNAL  MEANING  OF   IDEAS     321 

which  refer  to  these  objects,  just  as  there  are  countless 
cases  where  my  ideas  are  supposed  to  have  causes,  say 
physiological  or  psychological  causes,  of  which  I  myself 
never  become  conscious  at  all,  as  my  objects.  Nor  is  the 
object  the  object  of  a  given  idea  merely  because,  from  the 
point  of  view  of  an  external  observer,  who  looks  from 
without  upon  idea  and  object,  and  compares  them,  the 
idea  resembles  the  object.  For  the  sort  of  correspond- 
ence to  be  demanded  of  the  idea  is  determined  by  itself, 
and  this  correspondence  cannot  be  judged  merely  from 
without.  Again,  my  idea  of  my  own  past  experiences 
may  resemble  your  past  experiences,  in  case  you  have  felt 
as  I  have  felt,  or  have  acted  in  any  way  as  I  have  acted. 
Yet  when  my  ideas,  in  a  moment  of  reminiscence,  refer 
to  my  own  past,  and  have  that  for  their  object,  they  do 
not  refer  to  your  past,  nor  to  your  deeds  and  sorrows, 
however  like  my  own  these  experiences  of  yours  may 
have  been.  One  who,  merely  comparing  my  ideas  and 
your  experiences,  said  that  because  of  the  mere  likeness 
I  must  be  thinking  of  your  past  as  my  object,  would, 
therefore,  err,  if  it  was  my  own  past  of  which  I  was 
thinking.  Neither  such  a  relation  as  causal  connection 
nor  such  a  relation  as  mere  similarity  is,  then,  sufficient 
to  identify  an  object  as  the  object  of  a  given  idea. 

Nor  yet  can  any  other  relation,  so  far  as  it  is  merely 
supposed  to  be  seen  from  without,  by  an  external  ob- 
server, suffice  to  identify  any  object  as  the  object  of  a 
given  idea.  For  suppose  that  any  such  relation,  merely 
observed  from  without,  were  regarded  as  finally  sufficient 
to  constitute  an  object  the  object  of  a  given  idea.  I  care 
not  what  this  relation  may  be.  Call  it  what  you  will. 


322     THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

As  soon  as  you  define  such  a  relation  from  without,  and 
declare  that  the  idea  has  an  object  by  virtue  of  that  rela- 
tion to  this  object,  I  shall  merely  ask :  Did  the  idea  it- 
self intend  and  select  that  relation  as  the  relation  in 
which  its  purposed  object  was  to  stand  to  the  idea  ?  If 
you  answer  "  No,"  then  I  take  my  stand  beside  the  idea, 
and  shall  persist  in  demanding  by  what  right  you  thus 
impose  the  relation  in  question  upon  the  idea  as  the  rela- 
tion rightly  characterizing  its  object.  For  the  idea,  in 
seeking  for  truth,  does  not  seek  for  your  aims,  so  far  as 
you  are  a  merely  external  observer.  The  idea  is  selec- 
tive. It  seeks  its  own.  It  attends  as  itself  has  chosen. 
It  desires  in  its  own  way.  If  you,  having  somehow  first 
finished  and  established  your  own  definition  of  Being, 
choose  to  regard  the  idea  and  its  object  as  entities  in 
your  own  supposed  world,  then,  indeed,  you  can  talk, 
from  your  own  point  of  view,  of  the  various  real  rela- 
tions of  these  entities,  precisely  as  a  psychologist  does 
when  he  discusses  the  origin  or  the  results  of  ideas.  But 
just  now  we  are  not  first  presupposing  that  we  know 
what  the  Being  of  the  object  is  apart  from  the  idea,  and 
what  the  Being  of  the  idea  is  apart  from  the  object.  We 
are  trying,  in  advance  of  a  finished  conception  of  the 
Being  of  the  object,  to  define  the  essential  relation  that 
makes  an  object  the  object  of  that  particular  idea.  And 
as  the  idea,  precisely  so  far  as  it  intends  truth  at  all,  is 
through  and  through  a  selection,  a  choosing  of  an  object, 
I  ask  what  reason  you  can  have  to  say  that  the  object  is 
the  object  of  the  idea,  unless  you  observe  somehow  that 
the  idea  chooses  for  itself  this  object. 

But  now  if  you  reply,  "  Yes,  the  relation  of  object  to 


INTERNAL  AND  EXTERNAL  MEANING  OF  IDEAS     323 

idea,  here  in  question,  is  the  one  chosen  by  the  idea," 
then  you  admit  the  essential  point.  The  relation  to  the 
object  is  so  far  predetermined  by  the  idea.  Hence,  as 
we  have  now  seen,  the  object  of  the  idea  is  predetermined, 
both  as  to  what  object  it  is,  and  as  to  how  it  is  to  corre- 
spond to  the  idea,  through  the  choice  made  by  the  idea 
itself.  The  object,  precisely  in  so  far  as  it  is  object  of 
that  idea,  seems  thus  to  be  altogether  predetermined.  In 
brief,  the  object  and  the  idea  of  that  object  appear  to  be 
related  as  Hamlet  in  the  play  is  related  to  the  intent  of 
Shakespeare,  or  as  creation  and  creative  purpose  in  gen- 
eral are  related.  Hamlet  is  what  Shakespeare's  idea 
intends  him  to  be.  The  object  is  what  it  is  because  the 
idea  means  it  to  be  the  object  of  just  this  idea.  And  so 
much  may  suffice  for  our  thesis. 

But  the  antithesis  runs  :  No  finite  idea  predetermines, 
in  its  object,  exactly  the  character  which,  when  present 
in  the  object,  gives  the  idea  the  desired  truth.  For 
observe,  first,  that  the  object  of  a  true  finite  idea,  such 
as  our  idea  of  the  world  or  of  space,  is  in  any  case  some- 
thing other  than  the  mere  idea  itself.  And  the  truth  of 
the  idea  depends  upon  a  confirmation  of  the  idea  through 
the  presence  and  the  characters  of  this  other,  —  the  object. 
Now  error  is  certainly  possible  in  finite  ideas.  For  some 
finite  ideas  are  false.  And  that  this  last  assertion  itself 
is  true,  is  not  only  a  matter  of  common  opinion,  but  can 
be  proved  by  the  very  counterpart  of  the  Augustinian 
argument  about  Veritas.  For  if  there  could  be  no  error, 
then  the  customary  assertion  that  ideas  can  err,  i.e.  our 
well-known  common-sense  conviction  that  error  is  possible, 
would  be  itself  an  error,  and  this  result  would  involve  a 


self-contradiction.  Or  again,  were  no  error  possible, 
there  would  be  no  truth,  since  then  the  assertion  that 
there  is  no  truth  would  itself  be  no  error,  or  would  itself 
be  true.  This,  again,  would  be  a  contradiction.  Or 
finally,  if  error  were  impossible,  any  and  every  account  of 
Being  or  truth,  of  ideas  and  of  objects,  of  the  world  or  of 
nothing  at  all,  would  be  equally  true,  or  in  other  words, 
no  truth  would  ever  be  defined.  For  truth  we  define  by 
its  contrast  with  the  error  that  it  excludes.  So  some 
ideas  certainly  can  and  do  err  in  as  far  as  they  undertake 
to  be  ideas  of  objects.  Ideas  can  then  fail  of  their  desired 
correspondence  with  their  intended  objects,  just  because 
these  objects  are  indeed  other  than  themselves.  But  the 
error  of  an  idea  is  always  a  failure  to  win  the  intended 
aim  of  the  idea,  precisely  in  so  far  as  the  idea  sought 
truth.  Hence,  as  no  purpose  can  simply  and  directly 
consist  in  willing  or  intending  its  own  defeat,  it  is  plain 
that  an  idea,  precisely  in  so  far  as  it  can  turn  out  to  be  an 
erroneous  idea,  can  intend  what  its  object  forbids  it  to 
carry  out,  and  can  mean  what  its  object  excludes  ;  while 
in  so  far  as  the  object  thus  refutes  the  idea,  the  object 
contains  what  the  idea  did  not  purpose,  and  was  unable 
to  predetermine.  In  brief,  the  very  Possibility  of  Error, 
the  absolutely  certain  truth  that  some  ideas  give  false 
accounts  of  their  own  objects,  shows  that  some  objects 
contain  what  is  opposed  to  the  intent  of  the  very  ideas 
that  refer  to  these  objects.  And  so  the  antithesis  is 
proved. 

VIII 

In  view  of  this  apparent  antinomy,  how  is  the  idea 
related  to  its  object?     How  is  error  possible?     What  is 


INTERNAL  AND  EXTERNAL  MEANING  OF  IDEAS     325 

truth  ?  The  answer  to  these  questions,  —  the  solution  to 
all  our  previous  difficulties,  is  in  one  respect  so  simple, 
that  I  almost  fear,  after  this  so  elaborate  preparation,  to 
state  it,  lest  by  its  very  simplicity  it  may  disappoint. 
Yet  I  must  first  state  it,  abstractly,  and  perhaps  uncon- 
vincingly,  and  then  illustrate  it  as  I  close  the  present 
discussion,  leaving  to  a  later  lecture  its  fuller  develope- 
ment.  The  idea,  I  have  said,  seeks  its  own.  It  can  be 
judged  by  nothing  but  what  it  intends.  Whether  I  think 
of  God  or  of  yesterday's  events,  of  my  own  death,  or  of 
the  destiny  of  mankind,  of  mathematical  truth,  or  of 
physical  facts,  of  affairs  of  business,  or  of  Being  itself,  it 
is  first  of  all  what  I  mean,  and  not  what  somebody  merely 
external  to  myself  might  desire  me  to  mean,  that  both 
gives  me  an  object,  and  determines  for  me  the  standard 
of  correspondence  to  the  object  whereby  I  must  be  judged. 
Moreover,  my  idea  is  a  cognitive  process  only  in  so  far  as 
it  is,  at  the  same  time,  a  voluntary  process,  an  act,  the 
partial  fulfilment,  so  far  as  the  idea  consciously  extends, 
of  a  purpose.  The  object  meant  by  the  idea  is  the  object 
because  it  is  willed  to  be  such,  and  the  will  in  question  is 
the  will  that  the  idea  embodies.  And  that  is  why  Realism 
proved  to  be  impossible  ;  that  is  why  the  Independent 
Beings  were  self-contradictory  concepts  ;  that,  too,  is 
why  the  resignation  of  all  definite  purpose  which  Mysti- 
cism required  of  our  ideas  was  impossible  without  a 
failure  to  define  Being  as  any  but  a  mere  Nothing.  And 
every  definition  of  truth  or  of  Being  must  depend  upon  a 
prior  recognition  of  precisely  this  aspect  of  the  nature  of 
ideas. 

Whoever  says,  "  I  am   passive  ;    I   merely   accept   the 


326     THE   FOUR   HISTORICAL   CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

world  as  my  object ;  I  recognize  the  superior  force  of  this 
object,  and  I  have  no  part  in  willing  that  it  is  my  object," 
any  such  submissive  observer  is  invited  merely  to  state 
what  object  he  means,  and  what  idea  he  has  of  it.  He 
will  at  once  find  his  idea  arising  before  him  as  a  conscious 
construction,  and  he  will  regard  this  idea  as  intelligible 
because  he  follows  its  construction  with  his  own  unity  of 
purpose.  The  vaster  the  world  that  he  then  defines  as 
the  overwhelming  fate  of  his  intelligence,  the  larger  will 
be  the  part  that  his  own  consciously  constructive  will  has 
taken  in  the  definition  of  the  idea.  And  by  his  will,  I 
mean  here  not  any  abstract  psychological  power  or  prin- 
ciple so  to  be  named.  I  speak  here  of  will  not  as  of  any 
causally  efficacious  entity  whatever.  I  refer  only  to  the 
mere  fact  of  any  one's  consciousness,  insisted  upon  in 
these  discussions  from  the  start,  namely,  the  fact  that  the 
contents  of  an  idea  are  present  to  mind  as  the  actual 
embodiment  and  relative  fulfilment  of  a  present  purpose, 
such  as  for  instance  you  find  embodied  when  you  count 
or  sing.  Space,  time,  past,  future,  things,  minds,  laws,  — 
all  these  constituents  of  the  world,  our  supposed  passive 
spectator  of  universe  indeed  recognizes  as  objects  other 
than  the  ideal  products  of  his  will ;  but  his  ideas  of  these 
objects  come  to  him  precisely  as  constructive  processes, 
present  to  his  consciousness  as  his  own  act,  and  under- 
stood by  him  so  far  as  they  are  his  own  meaning.  More- 
over, the  objects,  too,  to  which  these  ideas  relate,  can  be 
understood  as  objects  only  when  the  ideas  embody  the 
will  to  mean  them  as  such  objects. 

But  now,  in  order  that  we  may  also  take  account  of  our 
former  problem  about  the  determinateness  and  individu- 


INTERNAL  AND  EXTERNAL  MEANING  OF  IDEAS     327 

ality  attributed  to  Being,  let  us  add  yet  one  further  con- 
sideration :  Whenever  an  idea  of  any  grade  aims  at  truth, 
it  regards  its  object  as  other  than  itself,  and  that  the 
object  shall  be  thus  other  than  itself  is  even  a  part  of 
what  the  idea  means  and  consciously  intends.  But  as  a 
will  seeking  its  own  fulfilment,  the  idea  so  selects  the 
object,  that,  if  the  idea  has  a  perfectly  definite  meaning 
and  truth  at  all,  this  object  is  to  be  a  precisely  determi- 
nate object,  such  that  no  other  object  could  take  its  place  as 
the  object  of  this  idea.  And  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  the 
object  is  such  solely  by  the  will  of  the  idea,  the  idea  under- 
takes submissively  to  be  either  true  or  false  when  com- 
pared with  that  object. 

Now  the  obvious  way  of  stating  the  whole  sense  of 
these  facts  is  to  point  out  that  what  the  idea  always  aims 
to  find  in  its  object  is  nothing  whatever  but  the  idea's  own 
conscious  purpose  or  will,  embodied  in  some  more  determi- 
nate form  than  the  idea  by  itself  alone  at  this  instant  con- 
sciously possesses.  When  I  have  an  idea  of  the  world, 
my  idea  is  a  will,  and  the  world  of  my  idea  is  simply  my 
own  will  itself  determinately  embodied. 

And  what  this  way  of  stating  our  problem  implies 
may  first  be  illustrated  by  any  case  where,  in  doing  what 
we  often  call  "making  up  our  minds,"  we  pass  from  a 
vague  to  a  definite  state  of  will  and  of  resolution.  In 
such  cases  we  begin  with  perhaps  a  very  indefinite  sort 
of  restlessness,  which  arouses  the  question,  "  What  is  it 
that  I  want  ?  What  do  I  desire  ?  What  is  my  real  pur- 
pose ?  "  To  answer  this  question  may  take  a  long  time 
and  much  care ;  and  may  involve  many  errors  by  the 
way,  errors,  namely,  in  understanding  our  own  purpose. 


328     THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

Such  search  for  one's  own  will  often  occupies,  in  the 
practical  life  of  youth,  some  very  anxious  years.  Idle- 
ness, defective  modes  of  conduct,  self-defeating  struggles 
without  number,  fickle  loves  that  soon  die  out,  may  long 
accompany  what  the  youth  himself  all  the  while  regards 
as  the  search  for  his  own  will,  for  the  very  soul  of  his 
own  inner  and  conscious  purposes.  In  such  cases  one  may 
surely  err  as  to  one's  intent.  The  false  or  fickle  love  is 
a  sort  of  transient  dream  of  the  coming  true  love  itself. 
The  transient  choice  is  a  shadow  of  the  coming  true 
choice.  But  how  does  one's  own  real  intent,  the  object 
at  such  times  of  one's  search,  stand  related  to  one's  pres- 
ent and  ill-defined  vague  restlessness,  or  imperfectly  con- 
scious longing.  I  answer,  one's  true  will,  one's  genuine 
purpose,  one's  object  here  sought  for,  can  be  nothing 
whatever  but  one's  present  imperfect  conscious  will  in 
some  more  determinate  form.  What  one  has,  at  such 
times,  is  the  will  of  the  passing  moment,  —  an  internal 
meaning,  consciously  present  as  far  as  it  goes.  And  now 
it  is  this  will  and  no  other  that  one  seeks  to  bring  to 
clearer  consciousness.  But  what  other,  what  external 
meaning,  what  fact  beyond,  yes,  what  object,  is  the  goal 
of  this  quest  ?  I  answer,  nothing  whatever  in  heaven  or 
in  earth  but  this  present  imperfect  internal  meaning  ren- 
dered more  determinate,  less  ambiguous  in  its  form,  less 
a  general  longing,  more  a  precisely  united  and  determi- 
nate life.  And  this,  once  rendered  perfectly  determi- 
nate, would  be  what  the  man  in  question  calls  "  My  life 
according  to  my  conscious  will." 

Well,  this  case  of   the  vague  purpose  that  one  seeks, 
not  to  abandon,  but  to  get  present  to  the  moment's  con- 


INTERNAL   AND  EXTERNAL  MEANING  OF   IDEAS     329 

sciousness  in  another,  that  is  a  more  explicit  and  precise, 
form,  and  if  possible,  in  what  would  finally  prove  to  be 
an  absolutely  determinate  form,  —  this  case,  I  insist,  is 
typical  of  every  case  where  an  idea  seeks  its  object.  In 
seeking  its  object,  any  idea  whatever  seeks  absolutely  nothing 
but  its  own  explicit,  and,  in  the  end,  complete,  determination 
as  this  conscious  purpose,  embodied  in  this  one  way.  The 
complete  content  of  the  idea's  own  purpose  is  the  only  object 
of  which  the  idea  can  ever  take  note.  This  alone  is  the 
Other  that  is  sought.  That  such  a  search  as  this  is  a 
genuine  search  for  an  object,  that  while  sought  appears  as 
another  and  as  a  beyond,  the  experience  of  the  mathemati- 
cal sciences  will  at  once  illustrate.  As  we  saw,  in  a  pre- 
vious discussion,  the  mathematician  deals  with  a  world 
which  his  own  present  ideas,  as  far  as  they  go,  explicitly 
attempt  to  predetermine  ;  yet  what  these  ideas  do  not  at 
present  completely  and  consciously  predetermine  for  the 
mathematician's  private  judgment,  in  advance  of  proof, 
is  precisely  that  further  determination  of  their  own  mean- 
ing which  they  imply  and  seek.  This  further  determi- 
nation the  mathematician  wins  through  his  process  of 
inquiry.  His  result  is,  then,  actually  willed  from  the 
start,  in  so  far  as  his  definitions,  which  are  themselves 
acts  of  will,  determine  in  advance  the  outcome  of  the 
proofs  and  computations  of  which  they  are  already  the 
initial  step.  But  at  the  instant  when  the  definitions  and 
considerations  of  his  problem  alone  are  present  to  the 
mathematician's  passing  consciousness,  the  outcome,  the 
fully  developed  meaning,  is  an  Other,  an  Object,  which 
the  mathematician  seeks.  At  any  moment,  in  his  further 
research,  he  may  attempt  to  define  this  Other  by  a  con- 


330     THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

jectural  or  hypothetical  construction,  a  tentative  idea, 
which  may  to  a  large  extent  prove  not  to  correspond  with 
the  fully  developed  purpose  which  the  result  of  the  in- 
quiry, when  reached,  presents  to  consciousness  in  as 
determinate  form  as  is  humanly  possible.  So  far  as  our 
narrow  human  consciousness  does  permit  this  result  of 
mathematical  inquiry  ever  to  appear  to  us  in  its  com- 
plete expression,  it  is  finally  observed,  however,  as  a  fact 
of  experience,  or  complex  of  facts  of  experience,  as  a 
series  of  properties  and  relations,  embodied  in  diagrams, 
symbols,  and  systems  of  symbols.  This  expression,  as 
far  as  it  goes,  fulfils  the  purpose  defined  from  the  start, 
the  very  outset  of  the  mathematical  inquiry.  In  this 
case  one  says,  "  Yes,  I  see  this  to  be  true,  and  I  see  that 
this  is  what  the  initial  definitions  meant."  Such  a  result 
of  mathematical  inquiry,  just  in  so  far  as  it  is  satisfactory, 
is  a  result  that  sends  us  no  farther,  or  that  defines  no 
object  lying  yet  beyond  itself.  This  then  is  the  answer 
to  the  mathematician's  initial  query. 

In  just  as  far  as  we  pause  satisfied,  we  observe  that 
there  "  is  no  other "  mathematical  fact  to  be  sought  in 
the  direction  of  the  particular  inquiry  in  hand.  Satis- 
faction of  purpose  by  means  of  presented  fact,  and  such 
determinate  satisfaction  as  sends  us  to  no  other  experi- 
ence for  further  light  and  fulfilment,  precisely  this  out- 
come is  itself  the  Other  that  is  sought  when  we  begin  our 
inquiry.  This  Other,  this  outcome,  is  at  once  uniquely 
determined  by  the  true  meaning  already  imperfectly 
present  at  the  outset,  and  it  is  also  not  consciously  pres- 
ent in  the  narrow  instant's  experience  with  which  we 
begin.  A  vaguely  indeterminate  act  of  will  thus  begins 


INTERNAL  AND  EXTERNAL  MEANING  OF  IDEAS     331 

a  process ;  the  object  sought  is  simply  the  precise  de- 
termination of  this  very  will  itself  to  unique  and  unam- 
biguous expression.  And  in  such  a  case  the  thesis  and 
antithesis  of  our  antinomy  are  reconciled.  For  the  object 
is  a  true  Other,  and  yet  it  is  object  only  as  the  meaning 
of  this  idea. 

But  how  is  it  when  facts  of  experience  are  sought,  — 
when  the  astronomer,  having  computed  the  planet's  place, 
looks  to  see  whether  the  determination  conforms  to  the 
apparently  wholly  "  external  empirical  object,"  when  the 
chemist  awaits  the  result  of  the  experiment  in  the  labora- 
tory, when  the  speculator  watches  the  waverings  of  the 
market,  or  when  the  vigilant  friend  by  the  bedside  longs 
for  the  favorable  turn  of  the  beloved  patient's  disease  ?  I 
answer,  in  all  these  cases  the  apparently  conflicting 
objects  and  ideas  in  question  are  indeed  far  more  numer- 
ous and  complex  in  their  relations  than  the  mathemati- 
cian's world.  And  we  shall  hereafter  consider  precisely 
such  complications  more  in  detail.  But  here  we  are  con- 
cerned with  the  most  universal  aspects  of  our  problem  as 
to  idea  and  object ;  and  so  here  I  can  only  respond,  What- 
ever the  object,  it  is  still  the  object  for  a  given  idea  solely  be- 
cause that  idea  wills  it  to  be  such.  If  it  is  experience,  of  a 
given  type,  and  won  under  determinate  conditions,  that 
you  seek,  then  in  just  that  region  of  inquiry  your  inquir- 
ing interest,  your  imperfectly  determined  initial  will, 
seeks  its  own  more  precise  determination.  But  this  self- 
determination  is  even  here  the  only  object  that  the  idea 
seeks.  No  idea  is  confirmed  or  refuted  by  any  experi- 
ence except  by  that  more  determinate  type,  or  instance, 
of  experience  which  the  less  determinate  and  vaguer 


332     THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

will  of  the  inquiring  idea  has  first  sought  as  its  ideal 
goal,  as  its  chosen  authority,  as  its  accepted  standard, 
and  so  as  its  own  object.  If  I  will  to  watch  for  stars, 
or  to  measure  places  of  heavenly  bodies,  or  to  be 
guided  in  the  determination  of  my  will  by  the  appear- 
ance of  certain  chemical  precipitates  in  test-tubes,  or 
to  stake  my  fortune  in  the  stock-market,  or  to  be 
determined  in  my  acts  by  the  empirical  outcome  of  this 
patient's  disease,  —  well,  in  all  such  cases,  it  is  an  experi- 
ence that  I  first  am  to  accept  as  the  determination  of  my 
purpose.  By  that  choice  my  development  of  my  ideas  is 
guided.  But  for  that  very  reason  the  awaited  experience 
is,  in  advance,  my  object  precisely,  because  it  is,  just  by 
virtue  of  my  own  purpose,  the  desired  determiner  of  my 
purpose.  The  same  rule  holds  here  also  as  in  the  former 
cases.  The  idea  is  a  will  seeking  its  own  determination. 
It  is  nothing  else.  And  herein  lies  the  explanation  of  the 
process  which  we  studied,  earlier  in  this  lecture,  in  our 
account  of  the  relations  between  judgment  and  experi- 
ence. Judgments,  taken  as  universal,  already  involve  a 
negative  determination  of  the  world  of  internal  meanings 
through  an  exclusion  of  bare  possibilities.  The  judg- 
ments of  experience,  the  particular  judgments,  express  a 
positive,  but  still  imperfect,  determination  of  internal 
meaning  through  external  experience.  The  limit  or  goal 
of  this  process  would  be  an  individual  judgment,  wherein 
the  will  expressed  its  own  final  determination. 

But  if  one  here  retorts,  "Ay,  but  in  the  empirical 
world  I  have  no  choice,  since  facts  are  facts,  and  the 
world  is  once  for  all  there ;  "  then  I  reply  :  I  do  not 
now  question  that  the  world  is  there.  I  am  asking  in 


INTERNAL  AND  EXTERNAL  MEANING  OF  IDEAS     333 

what  sense  it  is  there.  It  is,  but  what  Being  has  it  ?  We 
have  long  since  seen  that  the  whole  world  is  real  as  the 
object  that  gives  validity  to  ideas.  We  have  inquired 
as  to  the  sense  in  which  anything  can  be  called  object. 
We  have  found  the  sense  in  which  the  idea  chooses  its 
object.  We  have  found  also  that  the  object  is  nothing  but 
the  will  of  the  idea  itself  in  some  determinate  expression. 
But  now  one  points  out  that  in  giving  our  ideas  of  em- 
pirical objects  determinate  expression,  there  is  a  sense  in 
which,  once  having  committed  ourselves  to  given  ideas, 
we  have  no  more  choice  as  to  how  the  ideas  shall  turn  out 
to  be  determined.  Well,  is  not  this  an  obvious  enough 
result  even  of  our  own  view?  The  idea  in  seeking  for 
its  object  is  seeking  for  the  determination  of  its  own  just 
now  consciously  indeterminate  will.  This  is,  so  to  speak, 
the  game  that  the  idea  undertakes  to  play.  But  consist- 
ently with  itself  the  idea  cannot  choose  to  change  capri- 
ciously its  own  choice,  to  alter  the  rules  of  its  own  game, 
even  while  it  plays.  If  its  will  is  to  be  determined  only 
by  experience  that  it  awaits,  then  just  this  experience  is 
the  determiner  of  the  will.  In  this  sense  the  mathemati- 
cian, too,  has  no  choice.  He,  too,  awaits  the  outcome  of 
his  own  sort  of  experience  as  he  computes,  as  he  observes 
his  diagrams  and  symbols.  For  his  world  also  is  in  its 
own  way  an  empirical  world,  and  he  experiments  in  that 
world,  and  wills  to  accept  the  result.  In  this  same  sense, 
too,  the  youth  has  no  choice  as  to  what  he  shall  find  his 
own  will  to  be,  since  so  long  as  he  wills  in  his  own  way, 
his  struggles  for  self-comprehension  are  in  essence  pre- 
determined by  his  accepted,  if  not  yet  momentarily  con- 
scious selection,  of  a  life  plan.  The  idea  having  opened 


334     THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

the  game  of  its  life,  cannot  withdraw  its  own  moves  with- 
out failing  of  its  own  determination. 

Well,  precisely  so  it  is  with  all  the  facts  of  experience 
in  their  relation  to  specific  ideas.  All  finite  ideas,  even 
the  vaguest,  are  already  in  one  aspect  contents  of  experi- 
ence, imperfectly  fulfilling  purpose.  In  all  cases  every 
idea,  whether  mathematical,  practical,  or  scientific,  seeks 
its  own  further  determination.  In  every  case  it  is  true 
that  such  further  determination  is  also  to  be  given  only 
in  terms  of  experience.  Sometimes  it  is  a  definite  group 
of  sense-experiences  that  we  mean  in  advance;  then  we 
are  said  to  be  observant  of  the  physical  world ;  and  then 
in  physical  nature  only  do  we  find  the  desired  determina- 
tion of  our  will.  Sometimes,  as  in  the  mathematician's 
world,  we  deal  with  objects  that  appear  more  directly 
under  our  control  than  do  physical  objects.  But  there 
are  no  ideas  that  have  not  an  aspect  in  which  they  are 
masses  of  experience,  and  masses  of  experience  are  never 
objective  facts  except  in  so  far  as  they  present  the  answers 
to  specific  questions  about  fact.  And  the  answer  to  a 
question  is  merely  the  more  precise  determination  of  the 
will  that  asks  the  question. 

Of  course,  my  private  will,  when  viewed  as  a  mere 
force  in  nature,  does  not  create  the  rest  of  nature.  But 
my  conscious  will  as  expressed  in  my  ideas  does  logically 
determine  what  objects  are  my  objects. 

But  one  may  say  :  "  How  if  the  facts  of  experience  alto- 
gether refuse  to  fulfil  given  ideas  in  any  sense  whatever  ? 
Have  not  such  ideas  an  object  that  they  seek  and  never 
find  at  all  ?  Is  not  the  object  of  a  defeated  purpose, 
or  of  an  error,  still  an  object,  but  a  purely  ideal  one  ?  Yet 


INTERNAL  AND   EXTERNAL  MEANING  OF  IDEAS     335 

here  the  object  remains  precisely  object  of  an  unfulfilled 
idea.''  I  answer :  An  error  is  an  error  about  a  specific 
object,  only  in  case  the  purpose  imperfectly  defined  by  the 
vague  idea  at  the  instant  when  the  error  is  made,  is  better 
defined,  is,  in  fact,  better  fulfilled,  by  an  object  whose 
determinate  character  in  some  wise,  although  never 
absolutely,  opposes  the  fragmentary  efforts  first  made  to 
define  them.  As  for  failure,  or  practical  defeat  of  our 
plans :  The  practical  object  that  we  have  not  yet  won 
remains  for  us  a  Beyond,  or  Other  than  our  search,  pre- 
cisely so  long  as  we  still  seek  it ;  and  no  merely  external 
buffetting  of  so-called  hard  facts  ever  proves  to  the  reso- 
lute will  that  its  practical  objects  are  unattainable,  or  have 
no  existence,  until  we  see  an  inner  reason  why  just  these 
objects  are  really  excluded  by  a  fuller  understanding  of 
our  own  ideal  purposes  themselves.  I  do  not  will  just 
now  to  fly,  because  my  purpose  in  conceiving  nature  is 
now  relatively  fulfilled  in  a  system  of  ideas  which  excludes 
my  possession  of  the  power  to  fly.  But  were  I  an  in- 
ventor trying  to  perfect  flying-machines,  I  should  continue 
the  effort  to  find  the  determination  of  my  will  present  in  a 
flying-machine,  until  I  became  convinced  that  my  purpose 
as  defined  stood  somehow  in  conflict  with  itself,  or  with 
the  whole  idea  of  nature  of  which  it  is  a  portion. 


IX 

And  now  as  to  what  results  from  all  this  concerning  the 
essential  nature  of  the  object  of  any  idea,  and  as  to 
that  determinateness  and  individuality  of  Being  which 
has  so  perplexed  us. 


336    THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

Ideas  as  they  come  to  us,  in  their  finite  imperfec- 
tions, are  at  first  indeterminate,  and  for  that  very  reason 
vague,  general,  or,  as  technical  language  often  expresses 
it,  abstractly  universal.  That  is  precisely  why  they  at 
once  seek  and  attempt  to  define  another  than  them- 
selves, and  do  so  in  the  form  of  Universal  Judgments. 
For  an  universal,  in  the  abstract  sense  of  the  term,  is, 
as  we  have  fully  illustrated,  known  to  us  merely  as  that 
of  which  there  might  be  another  instance.  Whoever  seeks 
his  meaning  in  another  complex  of  facts  than  the  one 
present  to  him,  thereby  makes  explicit  that  what  he 
possesses  in  his  idea  is  merely  a  kind  of  fulfilment  of 
his  purpose,  and  not  a  whole  fulfilment.  Whoever  thinks 
merely  of  man,  of  triangle,  of  life,  has  a  general  idea. 
So  far  as  he  imperfectly  defines  a  purpose  that  essen- 
tially seeks  other  expression  than  the  present.  Who- 
ever longs,  loves,  hopes,  struggles,  aspires ;  whoever 
experiments,  watches  for  facts,  makes  hypotheses,  — 
whoever  is  finite,  possesses  in  his  passing  idea  a  gen- 
eral type  of  relative  fulfilment,  but  seeks  precisely  to 
specify,  to  render  more  determinate,  precisely  this  gen- 
eral idea.  He  first  looks  for  specification  in  further 
experience.  Finding  is  a  more  determinate  experience 
of  the  very  contents  of  one's  ideas  themselves  than  is 
seeking.  As  more  determinate,  it  takes  the  form  of 
Particular  Judgments. 

Well,  if  every  idea  is  as  such  a  general  type  of  em- 
pirical and  fragmentary  fulfilment  of  purpose,  if  in  seek- 
ing its  object,  its  Other,  the  idea  seeks  only  its  own 
greater  determination,  then,  at  the  desired  limit  of 
determination,  the  idea,  as  already  pointed  out,  would 


INTERNAL  AND  EXTERNAL  MEANING  OF  IDEAS     337 

face  a  present  content  which  would  imply,  seek,  and  in 
fact  permit,  no  other  than  itself  to  take  for  this  ideal 
purpose  its  place.  Now  an  object,  such  as  Socrates,  or 
this  world,  or  as  yourself,  is  called  an  individual,  as  we 
before  said,  when  one  conceives  that  for  a  particular 
and  determinate  purpose  no  other  object  could  be  sub- 
stituted for  this  one.  It  follows  that  the  finally  deter- 
minate form  of  the  object  of  any  finite  idea  is  that 
form  which  the  idea  itself  would  assume  whenever  it 
became  individuated,  or  in  other  words,  became  a  com- 
pletely determined  idea,  an  idea  or  will  fulfilled  by  a 
wholly  adequate  empirical  content,  for  which  no  other  con- 
tent need  be  substituted  or,  from  the  point  of  view  of  the 
satisfied  idea,  could  be  substituted. 

Now,  if  this  be  the  result  of  our  analysis,  we  can  at 
length  define  truth  and  Being  at  one  stroke.  You 
have  an  idea  present  at  this  moment.  It  is  a  general 
idea.  Why?  For  no  reason,  I  answer,  except  this, 
viz.:  that  this  idea,  being  but  a  partial  embodiment 
of  your  present  purpose,  could  get  and  desires  to  get 
some  other  embodiment  than  the  present  one.  This 
possibility  of  other  embodiment  means  for  you  just 
now  simply  the  incompleteness,  or  partial  non-fulfil- 
ment of  your  present  purpose.  Mere  generality  always 
means  practical  defect.  You  think  of  your  own  life. 
Your  idea  is  general,  just  because  your  life  could  be 
and  will  be  embodied  in  other  moments  than  this  one. 
The  idea  of  your  own  life  finds,  then,  just  at  this 
instant,  an  imperfect  expression.  Your  idea  of  your 
own  whole  life  is  just  now  vague.  This  vagueness 
means  for  you  the  possibility  of  other  embodiments. 


338     THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

Or  perhaps  you  think  of  numbers,  and  accordingly 
count  one,  two,  three.  Your  idea  of  these  numbers  is 
abstract,  a  mere  generality.  Why?  Because  there 
could  be  other  cases  of  counting,  and  other  numbers 
counted  than  the  present  counting  process  shows  you. 
And  why  so?  Because  your  purpose  in  counting  is 
not  wholly  fulfilled  by  the  numbers  now  counted.  In- 
completeness here  goes  with  universality.  There  could 
be  other  instances  of  the  idea,  just  because  what  is 
needed  to  fulfil  the  purpose  in  question  is  not  all  here. 
And  this  you  know  in  the  form  both  of  present  imper- 
fect satisfaction,  and  in  the  form  of  the  idea  of  other 
numbers,  and  of  other  counting  processes  than  are  here 
present  to  you. 

Well,  if  in  all  such  cases  of  your  present  and  imper- 
fect passing  ideas,  other  cases  of  your  idea  were  also 
fully  present  to  your  consciousness  just  now,  what 
would  you  experience?  I  answer,  You  would  experience 
at  once  a  greater  fulfilment  of  your  purpose,  and  a  more 
determinate  idea.  But  were  not  only  some,  but  all  pos- 
sible, instances  that  could  illustrate  your  idea,  or  that 
could  give  it  embodiment,  now  present,  even  at  this 
very  instant,  and  to  your  clear  consciousness,  what 
would  you  experience  ?  I  answer,  first,  the  complete  ful- 
filment of  your  internal  meaning,  the  final  satisfaction  of 
the  will  embodied  in  the  idea ;  but  secondly,  also,  that 
absolute  determination  of  the  embodiment  of  your  idea  as 
this  embodiment  would  then  be  present,  —  that  absolute 
determination  of  your  purpose,  which  would  constitute  an 
individual  realization  of  the  idea.  For  an  individual 
fact  is  one  for  which  no  other  can  be  substituted  with- 


INTERNAL  AND  EXTERNAL  MEANING  OF   IDEAS     339 

out  some  loss  of  determination,  or  some  vagueness. 
You  seek  another  so  long  as  your  present  purpose  is 
unfulfilled.  The  fulfilment  of  the  internal  meaning  of 
the  present  idea  would  leave  no  other  object  defined  by 
this  idea  as  an  object  yet  to  be  sought.  And  where 
no  other  was  to  be  sought,  the  individual  life  of  the 
whole  idea,  as  a  process  at  once  of  experience  and  of 
purpose,  would  be  present  fact. 

Now  this  final  embodiment  is  the  ultimate  object,  and 
the  only  genuine  object,  that  any  present  idea  seeks  as 
its  Other.  But  if  this  be  so,  when  is  the  idea  true?  It 
is  true  —  this  instant's  idea  —  if,  in  its  own  measure,  and 
on  its  own  plan,  it  corresponds,  even  in  its  vagueness, 
to  its  own  final  and  completely  individual  expression. 
Its  expression  would  be  the  very  life  of  fulfilment  of 
purpose  which  this  present  idea  already  fragmentarily 
begins,  as  it  were,  to  express.  It  is  with  a  finite  idea 
as  it  is  with  any  form  of  will.  Any  of  its  transient 
expressions  may  be  at  any  instant  more  or  less  abortive. 
But  no  finite  idea  is  wholly  out  of  correspondence  to 
its  object,  as  no  will  is  wholly  false  to  itself. 

We  have  thus  defined  the  object  and  the  truth  of 
an  idea.  But  observe  that  thus  we  stand  upon  the 
threshold  of  a  new  definition  of  Being.  Being,  as  our 
Third  Conception  declared,  is  what  gives  true  ideas  their 
truth ;  or  in  other  words,  to  be  real  is  to  be  the  object 
of  a  true  idea.  We  are  ready,  now  that  we  have  defined 
both  object  and  truth,  to  assert,  as  our  Fourth  and  final 
Conception  of  Being,  this,  that  Wliat  is,  or  what  is  real, 
is  as  such  the  complete  embodiment,  in  individual  form  and 
in  final  fulfilment,  of  the  internal  meaning  of  finite  ideas. 


340     THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

To  later  lectures  must  be  left  both  the  fuller  devel- 
opment and  the  further  defence  of  this  conception  of 
Being.  But  our  argument  in  its  favor  is,  in  its  foun- 
dation, already  before  you.  Being  is  something  Other 
than  themselves  which  finite  ideas  seek.  They  seek 
Being  as  that  which,  if  at  present  known,  would  end  their 
doubts.  Now  Being  is  not  something  independent  of 
finite  ideas,  nor  yet  a  merely  immediate  fact  that 
quenches  them.  These  were  our  results  when  we 
abandoned  Realism  and  Mysticism.  Being  involves  the 
validity  of  ideas.  That  we  learned  from  critical  Ra- 
tionalism. Yet  mere  validity,  mere  truth  of  ideas,  can- 
not be  conceived  as  a  bare  universal  fact.  We  wanted 
to  find  its  concreter  content,  its  finally  determinate  form. 
We  have  carefully  studied  this  form.  No  finite  idea 
can  have  or  conform  to  any  object,  save  what  its  own 
meaning  determines,  or  seek  any  meaning  or  truth  but 
its  own  meaning  and  truth.  Furthermore,  a  finite  idea 
is  as  much  an  instance  of  will  as  it  is  a  knowing  process. 
In  seeking  its  own  meaning,  it  seeks  then  simply  the 
fuller  expression  of  its  own  will.  Its  only  Other  is  an 
Other  that  would  more  completely  express  it.  Its  ob- 
ject proves  therefore  to  be,  as  proximate  finite  object, 
any  fuller  determination  whatever  of  its  own  will  and 
meaning.  But  as  final  object,  the  idea  can  have  only 
its  final  embodiment  in  a  complete  and  individual  form. 
This  final  form  of  the  idea,  this  final  object  sought 
when  we  seek  Being,  is  (1)  a  complete  expression  of 
the  internal  meaning  of  the  finite  idea  with  which,  in 
any  case,  we  start  our  quest ;  (2)  a  complete  fulfilment 
of  the  will  or  purpose  partially  embodied  in  this  idea ; 


INTERNAL  AND  EXTERNAL  MEANING  OF  IDEAS     341 

(3)  an  individual  life  for  which  no  other  can  be  sub- 
stituted. 

Now  in  defining  this  complete  life,  in  which  alone  the 
finite  idea,  as  a  passing  thrill  of  conscious  meaning,  can 
find  the  genuine  object  that  it  means  fully  embodied,  we 
have  so  far  still  used  many  expressions  derived  from  the 
conception  of  mere  validity.  We  have  spoken  of  what 
this  life  would  be  if  it  were  completely  present.  But, 
having  used  these  forms  of  expression  as  mere  scaffolding, 
at  the  close  we  must  indeed  observe  afresh  that  all  valid- 
ity, as  an  incomplete  universal  conception,  needs  another, 
to  give  it  final  meaning.  If  there  is  validity,  there  is  then 
an  object  more  than  merely  valid  which  gives  the  very 
conception  of  validity  its  own  meaning.  All  that  we 
learned  before.  It  was  that  very  defect  of  the  third  con- 
ception which  sent  us  looking  for  the  sense  in  which  there 
can  be  an  object  of  any  idea. 

We  have  now  defined  what  this  object  is.  It  is  an 
individual  life,  present  as  a  whole,  totum  simul,  as  the 
scholastics  would  have  said.  This  life  is  at  once  a  system 
of  facts,  and  the  fulfilment  of  whatever  purpose  any  finite 
idea,  in  so  far  as  it  is  true  to  its  own  meaning,  already 
fragmentarily  embodies.  This  life  is  the  completed  will, 
as  well  as  the  completed  experience,  corresponding  to  the 
will  and  experience  of  any  one  finite  idea.  In  its  whole- 
ness the  world  of  Being  is  the  world  of  individually 
expressed  meanings,  —  an  individual  life,  consisting  of  the 
individual  embodiments  of  the  wills  represented  by  all 
finite  ideas.  Now  to  be,  in  the  final  sense,  means  to  be 
just  such  a  life,  complete,  present  to  experience,  and  con- 
clusive of  the  search  for  perfection  which  every  finite  idea 


342     THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

in  its  own  measure  undertakes  whenever  it  seeks  for  any 
object.  We  may  therefore  lay  aside  altogether  our  ifs 
and  thens,  our  validity  and  our  other  such  terms,  when 
we  speak  of  this  final  concept  of  Being.  What  is,  is  for 
us  no  longer  a  mere  Form,  but  a  Life;  and  in  our  world 
of  what  was  before  mere  truth  the  light  of  individuality 
and  of  will  have  finally  begun  to  shine.  The  sun  of  true 
Being  has  arisen  before  our  eyes. 

In  finding  this  world  have  we  not  been  already  led  to 
the  very  definition  of  the  divine  Life  ?  Yet  must  we  leave 
to  the  later  lectures  some  portrayal  of  what  objects  this 
world  contains,  —  enough,  the  way  is  now  open,  and  we 
shall  enter  at  last  the  homeland. 


LECTURE   VIII 


LECTURE   VIII 

THE  FOURTH  CONCEPTION  OF  BEING 

ANY  doctrine  concerning  fundamental  questions  is  likely 
to  meet  with  two  different  sorts  of  objections.  The  ob- 
jections of  the  first  sort  maintain  that  the  theory  in  ques- 
tion is  too  abstruse  and  obscure  to  be  comprehended.  The 
objections  of  the  second  sort  point  out  that  this  same  theory 
is  too  simple  to  be  true.  Every  teacher  of  philosophy 
becomes  accustomed  not  only  to  hear  both  kinds  of  objec- 
tions from  his  more  thoughtful  pupils,  but  to  urge  them, 
for  himself,  upon  his  own  notice.  No  one,  in  fact,  is 
a  philosopher,  who  has  not  first  profoundly  doubted  his 
own  system.  And  it  is  in  presence  of  objections  that 
philosophical  theses  best  show  their  merits,  if  they  have 
merits. 

Upon  the  present  occasion  I  have  more  fully  to  devel- 
ope  the  conception  of  Being  to  which  we  were  led  at  the 
close  of  the  last  discussion.  While  I  shall  do  so,  in  the 
first  place,  independently,  I  shall  come  before  I  am  done 
into  intimate  connection  with  some  of  the  principal  objec- 
tions that  may  be  urged  against  our  theses  regarding  the 
definition  of  what  it  is  to  be.  For  the  objections  will 
help  us  to  make  clearer  our  position. 

I 

But  let  us  first  restate  our  thesis  as  to  the  nature  of 
Being.  There  is  an  ancient  doctrine  that  whatever  is,  is 

345 


346     THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

ultimately  something  Individual.  Realism  early  came  to 
that  view  ;  and  only  Critical  Rationalism  has  ever  explic- 
itly maintained  that  the  ultimate  realities  are  universals, 
namely,  valid  possibilities  of  experience,  or  mere  truths 
as  such.  Now  at  the  close  of  the  last  lecture,  after  ana- 
lyzing the  whole  basis  of  Critical  Rationalism,  the  entire 
conception  of  the  Real  as  merely  valid,  we  reinstated  the 
Individual  as  the  only  ultimate  form  of  Being.  In  so  far 
we  returned  to  a  view  that,  in  the  history  of  thought, 
Realism  already  asserted.  But  we  gave  a  new  reason  of 
our  own  for  this  view.  Our  reason  was  that  the  very 
defect  of  our  finite  ideas  which  sends  us  seeking  for 
Being  lies  in  the  fact  that  whether  we  long  for  practical 
satisfaction,  or  think  of  purely  theoretical  problems,  we, 
as  we  now  are,  are  always  seeking  another  object  than 
what  is  yet  present  to  our  ideas.  Now  any  ultimate  real- 
ity, for  us  while  as  finite  thinkers  we  seek  it,  is  always 
such  another  fact.  Yet  this  other  object  is  always  an 
object  for  our  thought  only  in  so  far  as  our  thought 
already  means  it,  defines  it,  and  wills  it  to  be  our  object. 
But  what  is  for  us  this  other  ?  In  its  essence  it  is  already 
defined  even  before  we  undertake  to  know  it.  For  this 
other  is  precisely  the  fulfilment  of  our  purpose,  the  satis- 
faction of  the  will  now  imperfectly  embodied  in  our  ideas, 
the  completion  of  what  we  already  partially  possess  in  our 
finite  insight.  This  completion  is  for  us  another,  solely 
because  our  ideas,  in  their  present  momentary  forms,  come 
to  us  as  general  ideas,  —  ideas  of  what  is  now  merely  a 
kind  of  relative  fulfilment  and  not  an  entire  fulfilment. 
Other  fulfilment  of  the  same  general  kind  is  needed  before 
we  can  face  the  whole  Being  that  we  seek.  This  kind  of 


THE  FOURTH  CONCEPTION  OF  BEING          347 

fulfilment  we  want  to  bring,  however,  to  some  integral 
expression,  to  its  own  finality,  to  its  completeness  as  a 
whole  fact.  And  this  want  of  ours,  so  I  asserted,  not 
only  sets  us  looking  for  Being,  but  gives  us  our  only 
ground  and  means  for  defining  Being. 

Being  itself  we  should  directly  face  in  our  own  experi- 
ence only  in  case  we  experienced  finality,  i.e.  full  expres- 
sion of  what  our  finite  ideas  both  mean  and  seek.  Such 
expression,  however,  would  be  given  to  us  in  the  form  of 
a  life  that  neither  sought  nor  permitted  another  to  take 
its  own  place  as  the  expression  of  its  own  purpose.  Where 
no  other  was  yet  to  be  sought,  there  alone  would  our  ideas 
define  no  other,  no  Being,  of  the  type  in  question,  lying 
yet  beyond  themselves,  in  the  direction  of  their  own  type 
of  fulfilment.  The  other  would  be  found,  and  so  would 
be  present.  And  there  alone  should  we  consequently 
stand  in  the  presence  of  what  is  real.  Conversely,  who- 
ever grasps  only  the  nature  of  a  general  concept,  whoever 
merely  thinks  of  light  or  colors,  or  gravitation,  or  of  man, 
whoever  lacks,  longs,  or  in  any  way  seeks  another,  has  not 
in  his  experience  the  full  expression  of  his  own  meaning. 
Hence  it  is  that  he  has  to  seek  his  object  elsewhere.  And 
so  he  has  not  yet  faced  any  ultimate  Being.  He  has  upon 
his  hands  mere  fragments,  mere  aspects  of  Being.  Thus 
an  entire  instance  of  Being  must  be  precisely  that  which 
permits  your  ideas  to  seek  no  other  than  what  is  present. 
Such  a  being  is  an  Individual.  Only,  for  our  present 
conception  of  Being,  an  individual  being  is  not  a  fact  inde- 
pendent of  any  experience,  nor  yet  a  merely  valid  truth, 
nor  yet  a  merely  immediate  datum  that  quenches  ideas. 
For  all  these  alternatives  we  have  already  faced  and  re- 


348     THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

jected.  On  the  contrary  an  individual  being  is  a  Life  of 
Experience  fulfilling  Ideas,  in  an  absolutely  final  form. 
And  this  we  said  is  the  essential  nature  of  Being.  The 
essence  of  the  Real  is  to  be  Individual,  or  to  permit  no 
other  of  its  own  kind,  and  this  character  it  possesses  only 
as  the  unique  fulfilment  of  purpose. 

Or,  once  more,  as  Mysticism  asserted,  so  we  too  assert 
of  your  world,  That  art  thou.  Only  the  Self  which  is 
your  world  is  your  completely  integrated  Self,  the  total- 
ity of  the  life  that  at  this  instant  you  fragmentarily 
grasp.  Your  present  defect  is  a  matter  of  the  mere  form 
of  your  consciousness  at  this  instant.  Were  your  eyes 
at  this  instant  open  to  your  own  meaning,  your  life  as  a 
whole  would  be  spread  before  you  as  a  single  and  unique 
life,  for  which  no  other  could  be  substituted  without  a 
less  determinate  expression  of  just  your  individual  will. 
Now  this  complete  life  of  yours,  is.  Only  such  com- 
pletion can  be.  Being  can  possess  no  other  nature  than 
this.  And  this,  in  outline,  is  our  Fourth  Conception  of 
Being. 

II 

Now  I  cannot  myself  conceive  any  one  lightly  accept- 
ing such  a  definition  as  this,  —  a  definition  so  paradoxical 
in  seeming,  so  remote  from  the  limits  which  common 
sense  usually  sets  to  speculation,  and  so  opposed  to  many 
dignified  historical  traditions  ;  and  indeed  I  wish  nobody 
to  accept  it  lightly.  The  whole  matter  is  one  for  the 
closest  scrutiny.  The  only  ground  for  this  definition 
of  Being  lies  in  the  fact  that  every  other  conception  of 
reality  proves,  upon  analysis,  to  be  self-contradictory, 


THE   FOURTH  CONCEPTION  OF  BEING  349 

precisely  in  so  far  as  it  does  not  in  essence  agree  with 
this  one  ;  while  every  effort  directly  to  deny  the  truth 
of  this  conception  proves,  upon  analysis,  to  involve  the 
covert  affirmation  of  this  very  conception  itself.  Upon 
these  assertions  of  the  absolute  logical  necessity  of  our 
conception  of  Being,  our  whole  case  in  this  argument 
rests.  And  in  order  to  make  this  fact  clearer,  I  must 
briefly  review  the  former  argument. 

Our  argument  in  the  last  lecture  was  based  upon  the 
consideration  that  Being  has,  at  all  events,  to  be  that 
object  which  makes  ideas  true  or  false.  The  more  special 
features  of  our  analysis  of  the  relation  of  idea  and  object 
were  as  follows  :  — 

An  idea  and  its  real  object,  in  case  the  idea  has  any 
real  object,  must  indeed  plainly  possess  some  characters 
in  common.  There  must  thus  be  general,  or  abstractly 
universal,  features,  belonging  to  them  both.  Upon  that 
point  all  theories  of  Being  to  some  extent  agree.  Even 
the  Mystic,  at  the  moment  when  he  calls  all  ideas  vain, 
identifies  your  true  Self  —  yes,  the  very  Self  that  now 
has  your  poor  ideas  —  with  the  Absolute,  and  says  of 
your  object,  viz.  of  the  true  Being,  "  That  art  thou." 
Even  the  Realist,  despite  the  independence  of  his  Beings, 
holds  that  the  ideas  either  truly  represent  the  nature  of 
these  beings,  or  else,  at  all  events,  have  in  common  with 
even  the  unknowable  object  some  features  whereby  the 
object  embodies  in  reality  the  same  fact  which  the  idea 
aims  to  express  when  it  seeks  for  the  reality.  The 
failure  of  Realism  we  found  to  be  due  to  the  logical 
impossibility  of  reconciling  the  independent  Being  of 
the  object  of  our  ideas  with  this  inevitably  assumed 


350     THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

sameness  of  nature,  which  must  be  possessed,  in  how- 
ever slight  a  measure,  by  both  the  knowing  idea  and 
the  object  that  it  knows.  In  the  world  of  the  Third 
Conception  of  Being,  that  of  Validity,  the  ideas  express 
with  more  or  less  precision,  and  in  their  own  way,  pre- 
cisely that  truth  which  is  to  be  valid  beyond  them.  And, 
in  fact,  as  we  just  saw,  the  most  general  conditions  which 
determine  for  us  the  problem  of  Being,  demand  that  the 
purpose  which  every  idea  has  in  seeking  its  Other,  must 
have  some  element  in  common  with  that  which  fulfils  this 
very  purpose. 

Idea  and  Reality  must,  then,  possess  elements  that  are 
common  to  both  of  them.  On  the  other  hand,  as  we  saw, 
this  mere  community  is  wholly  inadequate  to  the  tasks 
of  defining  what  makes  the  object  belong,  as  object,  to 
a  given  idea.  For,  if  you  view  any  idea  and  its  supposed 
object,  merely  as  one  might  be  imagined  viewing  them 
from  without,  it  is  wholly  impossible  to  determine  what 
degree  of  correspondence  between  them  is  required  either 
to  make  the  reality  that  precise  object  sought  by  the 
idea,  or  to  render  the  idea  the  true  representative  of  the 
object  to  which  it  is  said  to  refer.  A  true  idea,  as  Spi- 
noza said,  must  indeed  resemble  its  ideate.  But  on  the 
other  hand,  a  mere  resemblance  of  idea  and  ideate  is  not 
enough.  Nor  does  the  absence  of  any  specific  degree  of 
resemblance  necessarily  involve  an  error.  It  is  intended 
resemblance  which  counts  in  estimating  the  truth  of 
ideas.  If  in  fact  you  suppose,  as  an  ideal  case,  two 
human  beings,  say  twins,  absolutely  to  resemble  each 
other,  not  only  in  body,  but  in  experience  and  in  thought, 
so  that  every  idea  which  one  of  these  beings  at  any  mo- 


THE  FOURTH   CONCEPTION  OF  BEING  351 

ment  had  was  precisely  duplicated  by  a  thought  which 
at  the  same  instant,  and  in  the  same  fashion,  arose  in 
the  other  being's  life,  —  if,  I  say,  you  suppose  this  perfect 
resemblance  in  the  twin  minds,  you  could  still,  without 
inconsistency,  suppose  these  twins  separated  from  infancy, 
living  apart,  although  of  course  under  perfectly  similar 
physical  conditions,  and  in  our  human  sense  what  we 
men  call  absolute  strangers  to  each  other,  so  that  neither 
of  them,  viewed  merely  as  this  human  being,  ever  con- 
sciously thought  of  the  other,  or  conceived  of  the  other's 
existence.  In  that  case,  the  mere  resemblance  would  not 
so  far  constitute  the  one  of  these  twin  minds  the  object 
of  which  the  other  mind  thought,  or  the  being  concern- 
ing whom  the  ideas  of  the  other  were  true. 

The  resemblance  of  idea  and  object,  viewed  as  a  mere 
fact  for  an  external  observer,  is,  therefore,  never  by  itself 
enough  to  constitute  the  truth  of  the  idea.  Nor  is  the 
absence  of  any  externally  predetermined  resemblances, 
such  as  you  from  without  may  choose  to  demand  of  the 
idea,  enough  to  constitute  any  specific  sort  of  error. 
Moreover,  when  you  merely  assert  that  in  the  world  of 
Being  there  is  to  be  found  an  object  which  resembles 
your  idea,  you  have  so  far  only  mentioned  two  beings, 
namely,  your  idea  and  its  object,  and  have  asserted  their 
resemblance.  But  you  have  not  yet  in  the  least  defined 
wherein  the  Being  of  either  of  these  objects  consists. 
This,  then,  is  the  outcome  so  long  as  you  view  idea  and 
object  as  sundered  facts  agreeing  or  disagreeing  with 
each  other.  Neither  truth  nor  Being  is  thus  to  be 
defined.  The  result  so  far  is  conclusive  as  against 
the  adequacy,  not  only  of  Realism,  and  of  Mysticism, 


352     THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

but  also,  as  we  saw,  of  even  the  Third  Conception  of 
Being. 

For  if  one  asserts,  as  his  account  of  the  nature  of  Be- 
ing, that  certain  ideas  of  possibilities  of  experience  are 
valid,  he  is  so  far  left  with  a  world  of  objects  upon  his 
hands  whose  only  character,  so  far  as  he  yet  defines  the 
Being  of  these  objects,  is  that  these  objects  are  in  agree- 
ment with  his  ideas.  Such  a  definition  of  Being  consti- 
tuted the  whole  outcome  of  the  Third  Conception.  The 
mathematician's  ideas,  as  present  to  himself,  take  the 
form  of  observed  symbols  and  diagrams.  These,  so  far 
as  they  are  observed,  are  contents  of  experience  fulfill- 
ing purpose.  They  so  far  conform  to  our  definition  of 
what  constitutes  an  idea,  for  they  have  internal  mean- 
ing. But  the  existent  objects  concerning  which  the 
mathematician  endeavors  to  teach  us,  are,  by  hypothesis, 
not  the  symbols,  and  not  the  diagrams,  but  valid  truths 
to  which  these  diagrams  and  symbols  —  these  mathe- 
matician's ideas  —  correspond.  The  existences  of  the 
mathematician's  realm  are  other  than  his  mere  finite 
ideas.  Now  that  such  objects  have  their  place  in  real- 
ity, I  myself  thoroughly  believe.  But  I  point  out  that 
their  reality,  the  true  Being  of  these  objects,  is  in  no 
wise  defined  when  you  merely  speak  of  the  ideas  as 
nothing  but  valid,  because  the  assertion  of  validity  is  so 
far  merely  the  assertion  of  a  correspondence  between  a 
presupposed  idea  and  its  assumed  object,  without  any 
account  as  yet  either  of  the  object,  or  of  the  truth  of  the 
idea.  And  bare  correspondence,  the  mere  possession  of 
common  characters  in  idea  and  in  object  not  only  fails  to 
define,  but,  as  we  now  see,  can  never  lead  us  to  define, 


THE  FOURTH   CONCEPTION   OF  BEING  353 

the  Being  of  either  idea  or  object,  and  in  no  sense  shows 
or  explains  to  us  the  relation  whereby  the  idea  means,  se- 
lects, and  is  in  just  this  way  true  of  just  this  one  object. 

The  relation  of  correspondence  between  idea  and  ob- 
ject is,  therefore,  wholly  subordinate  to  another  and  far 
deeper  relation;  and  so  to  say,  "My  idea  has  reference 
to  a  real  Being,"  is  to  say,  "  My  idea  imperfectly  ex- 
presses, in  my  present  consciousness,  an  intention,  a 
meaning,  a  purpose ;  and  just  this  specific  meaning  is 
carried  out,  is  fulfilled,  is  expressed,  by  my  object." 
For  correspondence  to  its  object,  and  intentional  selec- 
tion of  both  the  object  and  the  sort  of  correspondence, 
constitute  the  two  possible  relations  of  idea  and  object. 
If  the  bare  correspondence  determines  neither  Being  nor 
truth,  the  intention  must  determine  both  Being  and 
truth.  In  other  words,  the  Being  to  which  any  idea 
refers  is  simply  the  will  of  the  idea  more  determinately, 
and  also  more  completely,  expressed.  Once  admit  this 
definition  of  the  nature  of  Being,  and  you  will  accom- 
plish the  end  which  all  the  various  prior  definitions  of 
Being  actually  sought. 

For,  first,  with  the  realist,  you  will  now  assert  that 
the  object  is  not  only  Other  than  the  finite  idea,  but  is 
something  that  is  authoritative  over  against  the  finite 
idea.  The  realist  gave  an  abstract  expression  to  this 
authority  of  the  object  when  he  said  that  the  object  is 
independent  of  the  idea.  The  abstraction  was  false  ;  but 
it  was  already  a  suggestion  of  the  true  meaning.  The 
finite  idea  does  seek  its  own  Other.  It  consciously 
means  this  Other.  And  it  can  seek  only  what  it  con- 
sciously means  to  seek.  But  it  consciously  means  to 
IA 


354     THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

seek  precisely  that  determination  of  its  own  will  to 
singleness  and  finality  of  expression  which  shall  leave  it 
no  Other  yet  beyond,  and  still  to  seek.  To  its  own  plan, 
to  its  own  not  here  fully  determined  purpose,  the  idea 
at  this  instant  must  needs  submit.  Its  very  present  con- 
scious will  is  its  submission.  Yet  the  idea  submits  to 
no  external  meaning  that  is  not  the  development  of  its 
own  internal  meaning.  Moreover,  the  finite  idea  is  a 
merely  general  idea.  But  what  it  means,  its  object,  is 
an  Individual.  So  you  will  all  agree  with  the  realist 
that  whether  or  no  the  idea  just  now  embodies  its  own 
object  of  search  as  nearly  with  present  truth  as  the  nar- 
row limits  of  our  consciousness  permit,  it  must  still  seek 
other  fulfilment  than  is  now  present,  and  must  submis- 
sively accept  this  fulfilment  as  its  own  authoritative 
truth.  But  you  will  reject  the  realistic  isolation  of  the 
idea  from  the  object,  and  of  the  object  from  the  idea. 
If  one  attempts  in  some  way  to  modify  his  Realism  by 
declaring  the  object  not  wholly,  but  only  partially,  inde- 
pendent of  the  ideas  which  refer  to  it,  still  such  a  modi- 
fied realist  would  only  the  more  have  to  face,  as  we 
ourselves  have  been  trying  to  face,  the  problem  as  to  how 
the  idea  and  its  object  are  positively  related.  And  if 
idea  and  object  are  left  in  the  end  in  any  way  as  two 
separate  existent  facts,  isolated  from  each  other,  then  one 
can  find  no  further  relation  between  the  isolated  idea  and 
object  except  the  relation  of  greater  or  less  correspondence, 
and  by  this  relation  of  mere  external  correspondence, 
taken  alone,  one  would  be  able  to  define  neither  the 
Being  of  any  object,  nor  the  truth  of  any  idea.  Or,  in 
other  words,  a  world  where  ideas  and  objects  merely  corre- 


THE  FOURTH  CONCEPTION  OF  BEING  355 

spond,  as  isolated  facts,  and  where  no  other  and  deeper 
relation  links  knowledge  and  Being,  is  a  world  where 
there  is  so  far  neither  any  knowledge  nor  any  Being  at 
all. 

But  secondly,  if  you  accept  our  Fourth  Conception,  you 
will  also  agree  with  Mysticism  in  so  far  as,  identifying 
Being  with  fulfilment  of  purpose,  the  mystic  says,  of  the 
object  of  any  of  your  ideas  :  That  art  thou.  For  the 
mystic  means  this  assertion  not  of  the  imperfect  self  of 
the  merely  finite  idea.  He  does  not  mean  that  this  pass- 
ing thrill  of  longing  is  already  fully  identical  with  the 
Other  that  this  very  longing  seeks.  For  the  mystic,  as 
for  the  realist,  Being  is  indeed  something  Other  than  our 
mere  search  for  Being.  The  mystical  identification  of 
the  world  and  the  Self  is  meant  to  be  true  of  the  com- 
pleted, of  the  fulfilled  and  final,  or  Absolute  Self.  Now, 
starting  with  any  idea,  we  shall  henceforth  say  to  this 
idea,  regarding  its  own  object,  precisely  what  the  mystic 
says  of  the  Self  and  the  World  :  That  art  thou.  Namely, 
the  object  is  for  us  simply  the  completely  embodied  will 
of  the  idea.  It  is  nothing  else.  But  we  shall  hence- 
forth differ  from  the  mystic  precisely  at  the  point  where 
the  mystic  takes  refuge  in  mere  negations.  We,  too,  of 
course,  shall  also  confess  our  finite  ignorance.  But  the 
Neti,  Neti  of  Yajnavalkya,  the  nescio,  nescio  of  the 
mediaeval  mystic,  will  express  for  us,  not  the  essential 
nature  of  true  Being,  as  the  mystic  declared,  but  merely 
the  present  inadequacy  of  your  passing  idea  to  its  own 
present  and  conscious  purpose,  —  a  purpose  known  pre- 
cisely so  far  as  it  is  embodied  at  this  instant.  We  shall 
say  if  we  follow  to  its  conclusion  this  our  Fourth  Con- 


356     THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF   BEING 

ception,  "  We  know  in  part,  and  we  prophesy  in  part ; 
but  when  the  object  meant,  namely,  precisely  when  that 
which  is  perfect  is  truly  said  to  be,  it  fulfils,  and  in  so  far 
by  supplementing  but  not  otherwise,  it  takes  away  that 
which  is  in  part."  Our  final  object,  the  urbs  Sion  unica, 
mansio  mystica,  is  for  us,  as  for  the  mystic,  the  unique 
Being  wherein  this  our  finite  will  is  fulfilled.  But  this 
one  object  meant,  this  fulfilment  of  our  will,  is  not  merely 
"founded  in  heaven."  Its  will  is  done  on  earth,  not  yet 
in  this  temporal  instant  wholly  as  it  is  in  heaven,  but  is 
still  really  done,  in  these  ideas  that  already  consciously 
attain  a  fragment  of  their  own  meaning.  They  are  ideas 
precisely  because  they  do  this.  The  sadness  of  the  mys- 
tical longing  is  now  for  us  lighted  by  glimpses  of  the 
genuine  and  eternally  present  truth  of  the  one  real  world. 
It  is  not  merely  in  the  mystic  trance,  but  in  every  ra- 
tional idea,  in  so  far  as  it  is  already  a  partially  embodied 
purpose,  that  we  now  shall  in  our  own  way  and  measure 
come  upon  that  which  is,  and  catch  the  deep  pulsations  of 
the  world.  Our  instant  is  not  yet  the  whole  of  eternity  ; 
but  the  eternal  light,  the  lux  eterna,  shineth  in  our  every 
reasonable  moment,  and  lighteth  every  idea  that  cometh 
into  the  world. 

And,  thirdly,  if  you  follow  our  Fourth  Conception,  you 
will  now  agree  with  the  critical  rationalist  when  he  asserts 
that  Being  essentially  involves  what  gives  the  validity  to 
ideas.  But  you  will  have  discovered  what  conditions  are 
necessary  to  constitute  validity.  The  valid  finite  idea 
is  first,  for  whoever  possess  it,  an  observed  and  empirical 
fulfilment  of  purpose.  But  this  fulfilment  is  also  ob- 
served in  this  instant  as  something  incomplete.  There- 


THE  FOURTH  CONCEPTION  OF  BEING          357 

fore  it  is  that  a  finite  idea  seeks  beyond  itself  for  its 
own  validity.  And  it  is  perfectly  true  to  say  that  if 
the  idea  is  valid,  certain  further  experience  of  the  ful- 
filment of  the  idea  is  possible.  Leave  this  further  expe- 
rience, however,  as  something  merely  possible,  and  your 
definition  of  Being  would  so  far  remain  fast  bound  in 
its  own  fatal  circle.  Is  the  idea  valid  or  not  ?  If  it  is 
valid,  then,  by  hypothesis,  further  experience  that  would 
confirm  the  idea  is  possible.  This  further  experience, 
like  any  object  existent  in  the  mathematician's  realm, 
is  both  known  to  be  something  Other  than  the  idea  that 
refers  to  it,  and  is  also  viewed  as  a  fact  precisely  cor- 
responding to  what  the  idea  means  to  define.  Now  so 
long  as  you  call  this  Other,  this  possible  experience, 
merely  such  a  bare  possibility,  you  define,  as  we  have 
said,  only  those  characters  of  this  object  which  the  ob- 
ject has  in  common  with  your  merely  present  idea  of 
the  object.  The  object  is  so  far  defined  as  an  experi- 
ence, and  as  having  this  or  that  type  or  form.  That 
is  what  you  say  when  you  talk  of  any  being  in  Kant's 
realm  of  Mogliehe  Erfahrung,  or  of  any  mathematical 
fact.  All  that  is  thus  defined  about  the  object  is  its 
mere  what,  the  characters  that  it  shares  with  your  pres- 
ent ideas  and  experiences  at  the  moment  when  you 
define  it.  What  therefore  you  have  not  thus  defined  is 
precisely  the  Being  of  the  object  as  Other  than  the 
very  finite  idea  which  is  to  regard  it  as  an  Other.  If 
you  have  once  observed  this  defect  of  any  assertion  of 
a  bare  possibility  of  experience,  you  will  have  seen  why 
the  mere  definition  of  universal  types  can  never  reach 
the  expression  of  the  whole  nature  of  real  Beings,  and 


358     THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

why,  for  that  very  reason,  the  realm  of  Validity  is 
nothing  unless  it  is  more  than  merely  valid,  nothing 
too  unless  it  takes  an  individual  form  as  an  unique  fulfil- 
ment of  purpose  in  a  completed  life. 

But  all  the  three  former  conceptions  are  now  to  be 
brought  into  synthesis  in  this  Fourth  Conception.  What 
is,  is  authoritative  over  against  finite  ideas,  as  Realism 
asserted,  is  one  with  the  true  meaning  of  the  idea,  as 
Mysticism  insisted,  and  is  valid  as  Critical  Rationalism 
demanded.  What  is,  presents  the  fulfilment  of  the 
whole  purpose  of  the  very  idea  that  now  seeks  this 
Being.  And  when  I  announce  this  as  our  Fourth  Con- 
ception of  Being,  I  do  not  mean  to  be  understood  as 
asserting  a  mere  validity,  but  as  reporting  facts.  I  do 
not  any  longer  merely  say,  as  we  said  at  the  outset  of 
our  discussion,  Being  is  that  which,  if  present,  would 
end  your  finite  search,  would  answer  your  doubts,  would 
fulfil  your  purpose.  All  that  was  the  language  of  va- 
lidity. It  was  a  mere  preliminary.  Since  validity 
has  no  meaning  unless  its  general  types  of  truth  take 
on  individual  form,  and  unless  the  what  turns  into  the 
that,  I  now  say,  without  any  reserve,  What  is  does 
in  itself  fulfil  your  meaning,  does  express,  in  the  com- 
pletest  logically  possible  measure,  the  accomplishment 
and  embodiment  of  the  very  will  now  fragmentarily 
embodied  in  your  finite  ideas.  And  I  say,  that  this 
embodiment  means  in  itself  precisely  what  your  present 
embodiment  of  purpose  in  your  rational  experience 
means,  just  in  so  far  as  your  purposes  are  not  mere 
fragments,  but  are  also,  even  in  their  transiency,  re- 
sults known  as,  relatively  speaking,  won,  as  possessed,  as 


THE  FOURTH  CONCEPTION  OF  BEING          359 

accomplished.  The  accomplishment  of  your  purpose 
now  means  that  your  experience  is  viewed  by  you  as 
the  present  and  conscious  expression  of  a  plan.  Well, 
what  is,  precisely  in  so  far  as  it  is,  is  in  the  same  way 
a  whole  experience  finally  expressing  and  consciously 
fulfilling  a  plan.  And  the  Being  of  the  real  object  of 
which  you  now  think  means  a  life  that  expresses  the 
fulfilment  of  just  your  present  plan,  in  the  greatest 
measure  in  which  your  plan  itself  is  logically  capable  of 
fulfilment. 

Into  this  categorical  assertion  of  a  concrete  experience 
embodying  a  plan,  our  whole  series  of  hypothetically 
valid  assertions  of  the  realm  of  Critical  Rationalism 
have  now  resolved  themselves.  A  will  concretely  em- 
bodied in  a  life,  —  and  these  meanings  identical  with 
the  very  purposes  that  our  poor  fleeting  finite  ideas  are 
even  now  so  fragmentarily  seeking,  amidst  all  their 
flickerings  and  their  conflicts,  to  express,  —  this,  I  say, 
is  the  reality.  This  alone  is.  All  else  is  either 
shadow,  or  else  is  partial  embodiment,  i.e.  is  a  striving 
after  that  ideal  which  needs  for  its  own  expression  this 
very  striving.  This  alone  is  real,  —  this  complete  life 
of  divine  fulfilment  of  whatever  finite  ideas  seek.  It  is 
because  the  finite  idea  essentially  seeks  its  Other,  so 
long  as  it  remains  indeterminate,  that  the  quest  can  be 
attained  only  when  the  will  of  the  idea  is  so  embodied 
that  no  other  embodiment  is  to  be  sought.  It  is  be- 
cause no  quest  can  be  defined  as  a  quest  without  defin- 
ing valid  possible  experiences  such  as  would  fulfil  or 
defeat  this  quest,  and  it  is  because  no  such  valid  possi- 
ble experiences  can  be  defined  without  presupposing 


360     THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

that  something  more  than  mere  validity  is  real,  —  it  is 
because  of  all  these  considerations  that  we  define  the 
fulfilment  of  the  finite  quests  embodied  in  our  present 
and  partial  ideas  as  the  essential  nature  of  Being. 


Ill 

So  far,  then,  we  have  restated  and  developed  our  Fourth 
Conception  of  Being  as  the  only  one  capable  of  defining 
how  an  idea  can  correspond  to  an  object  which  is  other 
than  the  idea,  but  which  is  still  the  very  object  con- 
sciously meant  by  the  idea. 

But  now  are  there  not  perfectly  natural  objections  to 
this  conception  ?  There  are.  They  appear  in  both  the 
before  mentioned  forms,  —  as  assertions  that  our  concep- 
tion is  too  complex  and  abstruse  for  the  plain-minded  man, 
and  as  assertions  that  our  definition  is  too  simple  for  the 
complexities  of  the  actual  universe.  Both  sorts  of  objec- 
tions, however,  will  prove  to  be  welcome  aids  to  the  very 
comprehension  of  our  conception  of  Being  itself.  Let  me 
here  begin  with  a  very  familiar  form  that  an  empirical 
objection  to  our  theory  may  take. 

"  After  all,"  one  may  say,  "  you  in  vain  endeavor, 
through  your  analysis  of  this  or  that  conception  of 
Being,  to  escape  the  conclusion  of  enlightened  common 
sense  that  experience,  and  experience  alone,  determines 
what  is  and  what  is  not.  The  whole  question  as  to 
Being  comes  in  the  end  to  this  :  A  man  can  frame  ideas 
as  he  will,  and  as  you  say,  ideas  are  indeed  wilful  enough 
constructions  of  merely  conceived  possibilities.  But  the 
question  about  Being  always  is,  Does  experience  con- 


THE  FOURTH  CONCEPTION  OF  BEING  361 

firm  the  ideas  ?  That  idea  expresses  Being  which  is 
found  to  be  confirmed  by  experience.  Upon  this  view 
of  Being  all  sane  science  is  founded.  But  this  view 
excludes  all  a  priori  constructions,  and  all  efforts  to 
pierce  the  mysteries  of  the  Absolute.  Constructions  of 
ideas  about  possibilities  of  experience  are  often  allow- 
able enough  in  science,  as  mere  hypotheses,  or  as  asser- 
tions about  what  is  probable.  But  the  test  is  the 
concrete,  present,  immediate  experience  of  this  or  that 
observer.  What  has  been  seen,  felt,  or  otherwise  empiri- 
cally encountered  by  some  body,  is  in  so  far  real.  Noth- 
ing else  is  for  us  men  knowable  about  the  constitution  of 
Being.  Now  when  you  talk  about  Being  as  a  final  fulfil- 
ment of  ideas,  and  of  human  experience  as  a  mere  frag- 
ment of  such  a  final  fulfilment,  you  transcend  human 
experience.  Your  view  is  too  abstruse  and  artificial  for 
plain  men.  We  no  longer  seek,  in  these  days,  for  any 
absolute  or  final  Being.  We  believe  what  we  find. 
Nothing  final  is  experienced  by  men.  The  realm  of  the 
empirical  is  always,  as  you  say,  fragmentary.  But  then 
this  is  the  only  realm  known  to  men.  This  alone  is  for 
us  real.  Ideas  furnish  us  the  what.  Concrete  experi- 
ence alone  can  supply  the  that.  I  conceive  in  idea  a 
horse.  In  experience  I  thereupon  see,  touch,  drive,  or 
buy  and  sell  horses.  Other  men  do  the  same.  Hence 
horses  are  real.  But  I  conceive  of  a  fairy.  My  idea  is 
perhaps  vivid.  But  still  I  never  see  fairies,  and  I  find 
that  none  but  children  and  ignorant  people  fancy  that 
they  have  seen  fairies.  So  fairies  remain  unobserved, 
and  so  far  appear  to  be  unreal.  The  same  rule  holds 
in  science.  Neptune  was  first  ideally  conceived,  but 


362     THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

this  idea  was  verified  by  astronomical  observation;  for 
the  predicted  planet  was  later  observed.  So  Neptune 
is  a  reality.  But  the  heavenly  spheres  of  an  older  as- 
tronomy proved  to  be  mere  ideas,  since  advancing  ex- 
perience proved  to  be  inconsistent  with  the  ideas  in. 
question.  So  in  science  and  in  life,  it  is  experience 
which  decides  that  any  supposed  Being,  whose  what  an 
idea  defines,  exists.  Away,  then,  with  your  hope  of 
finality.  Experience  is  fragmentary,  growing,  and  finite. 
And  Being  is  only  known  through  experience." 

So  far  the  objector.  I  reply,  in  a  way  already  indicated 
at  the  last  lecture.  I  myself  doubt  not  in  the  least  that 
the  realm  of  experience  is,  and  is  decisive  of  truth.  I 
doubt  not  this,  simply  because  our  Fourth  Conception  de- 
clares that  what  is  real  is  an  experience  presenting  the 
fulfilment  of  the  whole  purpose  of  ideas. 

Nur  in  der  Erfahrung  ist  Wahrheit,  said  Kant.  I  not 
only  accept  this  thesis,  but  insist  upon  it.  I  know  of  no 
truth  that  is  not  an  empirical  truth,  whatever  further 
character  it  also  possesses.  An  idea,  according  to  our 
original  definition,  is  already  a  fragment  of  experience 
although  partially  fulfilling  a  purpose.  The  fulfilment  of 
an  idea  could  not  possibly  take  any  form  that  was  not 
also  empirical.  Neither  God  nor  man  faces  any  fact  that 
has  not  about  it  something  of  the  immediacy  of  a  sense 
datum.  That  is  for  my  conception  a  logical  necessity. 
For  what  finite  ideas  seek  is  expression,  embodiment, 
life,  presence.  Experience  then  is  real.  Ay,  but  what 
experience  ?  And  above  all,  in  what  sense  is  experience 
real  ?  What  kind  of  Being  has  experience  ?  This  ques- 
tion must  be  answered  by  any  one  who  glibly  asserts  that 


THE  FOURTH  CONCEPTION  OF  BEING  363 

experience  is.  Now  it  seems  strange  to  find  that  while 
many  a  man  laughs  to  hear  how  some  of  the  earlier 
scholastics  supposed  that  not  dogs  and  lions  and  men,  but 
the  canine  nature,  and  leoninity  in  general,  and  humanity 
in  the  abstract  are  real,  —  still  this  same  man  will  appeal 
to  an  ideal  authority  called  Experience  in  general,  —  a 
mere  universal  idea  so  far,  —  as  decisive  of  what  is  real, 
or  as  itself  the  reality.  As  a  fact,  only  individual  experi- 
ence is  real,  be  that  the  experience  of  man  or  God.  And 
whoever  asserts  :  "  The  reality  is  experience,"  has  pre- 
cisely those  alternatives  to  face  about  the  sense  in  which 
experience  is  real  which  have  been  discussed  in  the  fore- 
going general  account  of  the  problem  of  Being. 

There  are  in  the  world  the  experiences  of  men. 
Granted.  But  are  these  experiences  facts  whose  Being 
is  wholly  independent  of  the  ideas  whereby  we  now  as- 
sert that  these  experiences  are  real  ?  If  we  assert  this, 
then,  our  empiricism  becomes  simply  one  form  of  Realism. 
It  now  defines  the  what  of  our  world  as  experience  ;  but 
the  that  it  defines,  not  at  all  merely  in  empirical  terms, 
but  rather  in  realistic  terms,  namely  as  a  form  of  Being 
independent  of  our  ideas,  in  so  far  as  these  ideas  refer  to 
the  reality  of  this  experience.  A  realistic  empiricist, 
therefore,  if  you  look  closer,  explicitly  transcends  the 
very  finite  experience  that  he  declares  to  be  the  only  test 
of  truth. 

For  consider  :  Suppose  that  you  say  that  the  experience 
of  mankind  is  a  real  fact,  and  is  what  it  is,  whatever  the 
metaphysical  dreamers  say  about  it.  Now  as  a  finite 
being,  confined  to  this  instant,  you  do  not  experience  my 
experience,  nor  in  the  same  finite  sense  do  I  now  and 


364     THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF   BEING 

here  experience  your  experience.  If  you  assert  that  my 
experience  is  real,  you  in  fact  mean  to  transcend  what 
your  present  finite  experience  presents  to  you.  And 
neither  your  present  fragment  of  experience  can  be 
directly  used  to  verify  the  fact  that  my  experience  ex- 
ists, nor  can  my  fragment  of  momentary  experience  itself 
be  used  to  verify  the  fact  that  you  are  thinking  of  me  at 
all,  or  are  referring  to  me,  or  are  even  meaning  to  assert 
my  existence.  And,  in  the  same  way,  it  is  not  a  present 
fact  of  any  man's  momentary  finite  experience  that  the 
body  of  fact  called  the  combined  experience  of  humanity, 
or  of  science,  or  of  any  group  of  men,  great  or  small, 
exists.  Whoever  asserts,  then,  that  human  experience 
exists,  as  a  body  consisting  of  the  many  experiences  of 
various  human  observers,  asserts  what  no  finite  human 
observer  ever  has,  at  any  moment,  experienced.  For  I 
insist,  no  man  ever  yet  at  any  instant  himself  observed 
that  mankind  as  a  body,  or  that  any  man  but  himself, 
was  observing  facts. 

Yet  more,  no  man,  at  any  one  of  our  temporal  human 
instants,  ever  then  and  there  empirically  verifies  the 
existence  even  of  his  own  past  experiences.  For,  by 
definition,  his  past  experiences  are  over,  and  are  irrev- 
ocably no  longer  present,  at  any  present  empirical 
moment.  No  man,  then,  has  ever  observed  the  empiri- 
cal fact  that  he  himself  has  in  the  past  observed  facts, 
or  has  acquired  by  experience  this  which  he  now  views 
as  his  own  personally  possessed  body  and  outcome  of 
experience. 

Therefore,  let  no  one  who  says,  in  a  realistic  sense, 
"  Human  experience,  the  experience  of  many  men,  exists," 


THE  FOURTH   CONCEPTION  OF  BEING  365 

venture  to  add  that  he  himself,  or  that  any  other  man 
has,  merely  as  man,  empirically  verified  this  assertion. 
It  is  false,  then,  to  say  that  for  such  an  assertion  ideas 
furnish  the  what,  and  our  human  experience  itself,  in  the 
form  in  which  any  man  gets  that  experience,  ever  verifies 
the  that.  The  assertion  that  a  body  of  human  experience 
exists,  gets  its  that  from  some  source  not  to  be  found  in 
any  one  man's  experience  at  any  time.  Our  realistic 
empiricist  is,  therefore,  so  far  precisely  like  other  realists. 
He  transcends  every  man's  personal  experience.  He 
asserts  the  existence  of  independent  Beings.  He  tran- 
scends all  that  any  man  ever  has  directly  verified,  or,  as 
mere  man,  will  at  any  instant  ever  verify.  He  is  as 
transcendently  metaphysical  in  his  thesis  as  a  Leibnitz  or 
as  a  Herbart  ever  was  in  talking  of  Monads  or  of  Reals. 
He  can  be  decisively  judged,  however,  only  by  the  con- 
sistency of  his  ontological  predicate.  And  we  already 
know,  in  so  far  as  he  is  a  thoroughgoing  realist,  his  fate. 
For  human  experience,  in  so  far  as  it  is  existent  apart 
from  our  ideas  which  refer  to  it,  is  either  something  con- 
sciously meant  by  these  ideas,  or  it  is  something  not 
meant  by  them.  If  it  is  meant  by  them,  it  is  either  their 
whole  real  fulfilment  in  the  form  defined  by  our  Fourth 
Conception ;  or  else  it  is  a  part  of  just  such  a  real  final 
fulfilment.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  if  it  is  something 
wholly  independent  in  its  existence  of  whether  our 
private  and  momentary  ideas  refer  to  it  or  not ;  in  other 
words,  if  it  is  a  realm  of  facts  whose  type  of  Being  is  the 
realistic  type,  then  in  vain  do  you  call  it  experience. 
Like  any  realistic  Being,  it  is  one  whose  existence  cannot 
be  referred  to  at  all  without  the  inconsistencies  before 


366     THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

observed.  And  in  the  end,  like  any  other  realistic  Being, 
it  is  nothing  at  all. 

Our  empiricist  may  then  take  his  choice.  He  is  with 
us,  or  against  us.  If  he  is  the  latter,  we  have  already 
dealt  with  him.  For  just  so,  if  the  experience  to  which 
our  empiricist  refers  is  the  realm  of  the  valid  possibilities 
of  experience,  we  already  know  its  meaning  and  outcome. 
Conceive  the  realm  of  possible  experience  consistently, 
and  it  becomes  the  realm  of  our  own  conception  of  Being. 
But  if  one  means  only  the  sort  of  pure  experience,  the 
bare  immediacy,  to  which  the  mystic  referred,  that  sort 
of  experience,  as  we  found,  is  again  explicitly  nothing 
at  all. 

But  if  this  empirical  realm  in  question  is  the  genuine 
realm  of  experience  to  which  our  ideas  refer  when,  talk- 
ing of  experience  with  rational  definiteness,  we  mean  to 
see  clearly,  to  observe  closely,  to  know  richly,  and  to  live 
wisely,  this  is  indeed  an  empirical  world,  and  it  is  real. 
But  it  is  real  in  the  sense  of  our  Fourth  Conception.  It 
is  a  life  expressing  in  fulness  what  every  transient 
moment  of  human  consciousness  fragmentarily  embodies, 
and  ideally  seeks. 

And  as  to  finality,  what  constitution  shall  that  realm 
of  actual  experience  possess  at  all  unless  this  constitu- 
tion, in  its  wholeness,  is  indeed  final,  and  final  precisely 
in  the  sense  of  our  Fourth  Conception?  For  finality 
means,  for  us,  the  individual  constitution  of  the  realm 
of  fact,  interpreted  in  the  only  possible  consistent  way. 
You  say,  "Experience  is."  If  you  are  an  empiricist 
you  also  say,  "All  that  is,  is,  in  at  least  one  aspect, 
experienced  fact."  Now,  so  far,  all  that  is  precisely 


THE  FOURTH  CONCEPTION  OF  BEING  367 

what  our  Fourth  Conception  says.  So  far  we  agree 
with  any  empiricist.  But  if  you  reject  our  Fourth  Con- 
ception, you  then  add,  "  This  experience  which  is,  is,  even 
when  taken  in  its  totality,  a  fragmentary  experience, — 
a  mere  collection  of  whatever  happens  to  be ;  —  and  this 
world  of  experience  possesses  no  finality."  But  do  you 
mean  hereby  that  of  two  contradictory  propositions  made 
about  the  existence  of  a  supposed  individual  fact  in  this 
whole  realm  of  the  real  experience,  both  or  neither  may 
now  be  true  ?  Do  you  mean  that  if  I  say  :  "  There  is  life 
after  death,"  or,  "There  was  the  siege  of  Troy,"  or, 
"There  is  the  observable  planet  Neptune,"  or,  "There 
is  happiness  in  yonder  child's  heart  as  he  sings,"  I  can 
thus  assert  a  proposition  that  is  neither  true  nor  false,  or 
that  is  both  true  and  false  at  once,  and  in  the  same  sense  ? 
If  this  were  what  you  asserted,  the  assertion  would  indeed 
mean  nothing.  But  otherwise,  if  the  world  of  experience, 
as  a  real  world,  has  even  now,  while  we  speak,  an  actual 
constitution,  then  any  definite  proposition  about  the 
world  is  either  true  or  false  when  it  is  made.  But  if 
so,  any  proposition  with  a  definite  internal  meaning 
involves  ideas  that,  when  the  proposition  is  made,  con- 
sciously mean  to  refer  to  the  existent  facts  of  that  world 
of  real  experience.  But  such  reference  to  objects  does 
not  consist,  as  we  have  now  sufficiently  seen,  in  mere 
correspondence  between  idea  and  object.  The  only 
reference  that  can  constitute  the  meaning  of  an  idea  is 
one  which  involves  the  complete  expression  of  the  will 
of  the  idea.  But  if  every  issue  which  ideas  can  join, 
with  regard  to  the  constitution  of  the  empirical  world,  if 
every  contradictory  opposition  which  the  ideas  can  ex- 


368     THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

press,  has  its  correspondent  decision,  yes  or  no,  in  the  facts 
of  the  truly  real  empirical  world,  then  the  fulfilment  of 
the  ideas  about  experience  in  the  facts  of  experience  to 
which  they  refer,  is  once  for  all  a  wholly  determinate 
fulfilment.  And  in  this  case,  whatever  constitution  the 
world  of  experience  in  its  entirety  possesses,  is  as  such  an 
individual  and  final  constitution. 

And  so,  we  say,  the  empirical  world  is  a  whole,  a  life 
fulfilling  the  purposes  of  our  ideas.  It  is  that  or  it  is 
nothing.  You  labor  in  vain.  The  net  of  truth  enmeshes 
your  doubts. 

"  And  yet,"  as  you  may  now  interpose,  "  we  have  but 
just  seen  that  no  man  experiences,  for  himself,  at  any 
moment,  this  final  constitution  of  our  realm  of  experi- 
ence." Of  course  no  man  experiences  that  constitution. 
Now  we  see  through  a  glass  darkly.  It  is  not  yet  re- 
vealed what  we  shall  be.  It  is  not  yet  known  to  us  what 
our  own  whole  experience  itself  in  its  details  contains. 
But  we  know  that  it  is.  And  we  observe  the  constitu- 
tion of  that  realm.  It  is  through  and  through  a  consti- 
tution that  answers  our  questions,  embodies  our  meanings, 
integrates  our  purposes.  It  is  then  in  essence  a  realm  of 
fact  fulfilling  purpose,  of  life  embodying  idea,  of  meaning 
won  by  means  of  the  experience  of  its  own  content.  The 
now  present  but  passing  form  of  our  human  consciousness 
is  fragmentary.  We  wait,  wonder,  pass  from  fact  to  fact, 
from  fragment  to  fragment.  What  a  study  of  the  con- 
cept of  Being  reveals  to  us  is  precisely  that  the  whole 
has  a  meaning,  and  is  real  only  as  a  Meaning  Embodied. 


THE  FOURTH  CONCEPTION  OF  BEING          369 

IV 

"But,"  our  objector  next  retorts,  "your  view  is  still 
too  abstruse  for  a  plain  man,  —  for  how  can  you  thus  dare 
to  transcend  the  limits  of  human  consciousness?  It  is 
true  that  when  a  man  thinks,  he  just  then  consciously 
aims  only  at  a  meaning  which  is  present  to  himself  at  the 
instant.  But  you  talk  now  about  the  constitution  of  a 
realm  of  Being  that  is  to  lie  beyond  the  limits  of  any 
merely  human  experience.  For  you  admit  that  no  man 
has  yet  seen  at  any  one  instant  this  which  you  call  the 
whole  of  his  meaning  empirically  expressed.  Now,  how 
can  you  have  any  assurance  as  to  such  a  realm  of  tran- 
scendent and  superhuman  finality  of  experience?  Per- 
haps there  is  experience  beyond  our  own,  perhaps  not. 
At  all  events,  any  man  actually  knows  only  his  own  con- 
tents of  experience,  and  with  more  or  less  probability  he 
guesses  at  the  existence  of  other  contents  than  his  own 
in  other  men.  But  nobody  can  assert,  with  real  or  posi- 
tive assurance,  any  Being  that  transcends  his  own  present 
experience.  Yet  you  talk  of  final  Being,  and  of  its 
constitution.  Perhaps  there  is  no  final  Being.  Perhaps 
there  is  only  the  present  fragment  of  empirical  life. 
Even  my  own  past  and  future,  as  you  say,  are  not  present 
to  me.  How  should  I  myself  at  this  instant  know  that 
there  exists  more  than  what  is  now  present  to  me  ?  Why, 
then,  cannot  we  be  mere  sceptics,  doubting  all  reality  not 
now  and  here  given  ?  " 

I  reply  at  once  :  State  your  doubt  in  a  more  precise 
form.  Tell  what  it  means.  What  hypothesis,  if  any,  do 
you  oppose  to  our  own  thesis  as  to  this  complete  and  in- 

2B 


370    THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

dividual,  this  teleological  constitution  of  the  realm  of 
Being,  which  we  have  asserted  as  our  Fourth  Conception. 
What  is  it  that  you  doubt?  And  what  alternative 
would  be  true  if  your  doubt  were  well  founded  ?  Hesi- 
tate not  to  give  your  doubt  all  possible  precision.  Phi- 
losophy lives  upon  the  comprehension  of  the  meaning  of 
its  own  doubts. 

Let  one  then  say,  by  way  of  a  mere  trial  at  scepticism  •. 
"  Beyond  a  given  circle  of  experience,  supposed  to  be  at 
present  known  to  you  and  to  me,  or  to  me  alone,  there 
may  be  Nothing  at  all.  Let  us  then  suppose,  for  argu- 
ment's sake,  that  there  is  nothing  at  all  beyond  what  you 
or  I  may  just  now  feel  to  be  present,  as  our  empirical 
facts,  as  our  passing  conscious  ideas,  desires,  hopes,  as 
our  so-called  memories,  and  as  the  problems  of  the  in- 
stant. Let  that  be  the  realm  of  Being.  Let  there  be 
supposed  to  be  naught  in  the  universe  but  just  this.  Now 
this  little  realm  of  given  fact  has  no  consciously  experi- 
enced finality  about  it,  no  wholeness,  no  satisfying  con- 
stitution, no  absoluteness.  Yet  this  little  realm  of  passing 
consciousness  somehow  exists.  How  then  shall  this 
Fourth  Conception  of  Being  refute  the  purely  sceptical 
hypothesis  thus  made  ?  And  unless  such  a  sceptical  hy- 
pothesis is  refuted,  how  can  any  assertions  which  tran- 
scend the  instantaneous  limits  of  our  human  form  of 
consciousness  be  made  in  any  wise  certain  ?  " 

So  far  the  doubter's  hypothesis.  I  reply  :  This  doubt, 
once  stated  as  a  possible  account  of  a  realm  of  Being, 
has  all  the  responsibilities  of  any  ontology.  It  hypotheti- 
cally  defines  as  real,  a  supposed,  or  given,  finite  circle  of 
empirical  facts,  called  this  instant's  contents.  It  sup- 


THE  FOURTH  CONCEPTION  OF  BEING  371 

poses  this  circle  to  be  conceived,  for  the  moment,  as  the 
whole  of  Being,  as  all  that  there  is.  Well,  what  does 
this  hypothetical  assertion  mean  ?  Stripped  of  its  acces- 
sories, it  means  simply :  A  certain  finite  momentary 
collection  of  empirical  facts,  ideas,  desires,  etc.,  merely 
called  the  present  moment,  is  the  universe.  Now,  to 
simplify  the  matter,  name  this  finite  conscious  instant  of 
experience,  of  thought  and  of  will,  A.  One  supposes 
that  A  is  all,  or  that  nothing  but  A  exists.  Well,  this 
assertion,  like  any  other  metaphysical  one,  involves  a 
what  and  a  that.  Moreover,  it  asserts  the  non-being  of 
anything  but  A.  Now  an  assertion  of  non-being  is  sub- 
ject to  the  same  general  conditions  as  an  assertion  of 
Being.  Whatever  one  means  by  Being,  the  meaning  of 
the  negative  of  Being,  or  of  the  assertion  that  something 
does  not  exist,  is  determined  by  the  sense  given  to  the 
predicate  by  which  one  affirms  Being.  Premising  this, 
then,  let  one  estimate  the  consistency  of  the  hypothesis 
now  in  question. 

If  one  asserts ;  A  is  all  or,  There  is  naught  but  A,  the 
assertion  involves  ideas,  and  if  it  means  anything  these 
ideas  possess  some  object.  Now  by  hypothesis,  the  pres- 
ent moment,  or  A,  does  not  itself  contain  the  direct  ex- 
perience of  the  fact  that  it  includes  the  whole  universe 
of  Being.  For  if  A  were  certainly  aware  that  nothing 
besides  itself  could  exist,  it  would  consciously  have  pres- 
ent what  exhausted,  even  in  the  very  present  conscious- 
ness of  A,  the  whole  possible  meaning  of  the  idea  of 
Being.  But  A  would  itself  then  be  a  completely  em- 
bodied meaning,  an  absolutely  self-possessed  Whole  of 
experience,  fulfilling  its  own  purpose.  Or  in  other  words, 


372    THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL   CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

our  own  Fourth  Conception  of  Being  would  directly  ap- 
ply to  it.  And  our  doubter  would  then  be  no  mere 
sceptic ;  for  his  positive  account  would  be  ours.  But 
since,  by  hypothesis,  A  is  a  passing  moment,  a  dissatis- 
fied instant  of  finite  human  experience,  the  fact  that  it 
comprises  all  that  is  real  is  not  itself  present  to  the  ex- 
perience of  A.  And  the  non-being  of  all  except  A,  the 
exclusion  from  Being  of  all  not  present  in  A,  is  supposed 
to  be  a  fact,  but  a  fact  whose  that,  whose  very  existence 
as  a  real  fact,  must  consequently  be  sought  elsewhere  than 
in  the  conscious  experience  present  to  A  alone.  This 
already  contradicts  the  hypothesis  here  in  question,  as  we 
first  stated  it.  For  the  fact  that  A  is  all  Being  cannot 
itself  be  part  of  the  experience  of  a  consciously  frag- 
mentary, or  dissatisfied  A.  Yet  A  was,  by  hypothesis, 
to  contain  all  Being.  Our  sceptic,  then,  if  you  suppose 
him  a  mere  partisan  of  experience  as  the  only  reality,  has 
begun  by  contradicting  himself. 

But  this  is  not  all.  This  supposed  fact,  that  A  is  all 
Being,  or  that  Naught  but  A  exists,  may  indeed  next  be 
made  formally  consistent  with  itself  by  an  amendment. 
Let  the  hypothesis  now  run,  as  amended,  thus:  '''•A  con- 
tains all  experience,  or  all  conscious  fact,  but  besides  this 
conscious  fact  there  does  exist  the  unconscious  fact,  the  mere 
brute  reality,  unknown  to  anybody,  and  present  to  nobody's 
experience,  the  mere  fact  that  A  is,  not  indeed  all  Being,  but 
all  Experience"  The  sceptical  hypothesis  thus  amended 
leads,  however,  at  once,  to  precisely  our  foregoing  alter- 
natives as  to  the  sense  in  which  this  supposed  fact  of  the 
loneliness  of  A  can  be  asserted  as  a  real  fact.  That  there 
is  no  experience  in  the  universe  except  A,  is  now  supposed 


THE  FOURTH  CONCEPTION  OF  BEING          373 

to  be  itself  a  fact,  but  a  fact  whose  reality  nobody  experi- 
ences. But  what  kind  of  Being  has  this  fact  ?  It  is,  by 
hypothesis,  the  object  to  which  the  sceptical  assertion 
relates.  As  such  object,  other  than  the  sceptic's  asser- 
tion, but  really  meant  by  him  as  a  truth,  it  is  in  the  posi- 
tion that  we  have  now  exhaustively  discussed.  It  cannot 
be  a  fact  whose  Being  is  wholly  independent  of  the  scep- 
tic's own  assertion,  nor  yet  a  being  of  the  mystical  type, 
nor  a  merely  universal  valid  truth,  of  the  type  of  our 
Third  Conception  of  Being.  For  all  these  types  of  Being 
have  been  found  logically  wanting.  Nor  can  it  be  in  any 
sense  an  object  merely  agreeing  with  our  sceptic's  assertion, 
and  externally  correspondent  thereto.  For  external  agree- 
ment with  an  idea  that  asserts  Being,  when  such  agree- 
ment is  taken  alone,  constitutes  neither  the  Being  of  any 
object,  nor  the  truth  of  any  idea.  That  A  is  the  only  ex- 
istent experience  must,  therefore,  be  a  fact  which,  as  an 
individual  fact,  fulfils  the  will  embodied  in  the  sceptic's 
hypothesis,  both  in  so  far  as  this  will  refers  to  that  fact, 
and  in  so  far  as  the  sceptic  himself  inevitably,  even  in 
still  supposing  the  non-being  of  all  but  A,  talks  of  Being 
in  general  and  of  the  universe  in  its  wholeness.  The 
only  possible  result  is  that,  in  asserting  that  A  is  all  ex- 
perience, the  sceptic's  hypothesis,  if  consistent  with  itself, 
asserts  that  A  itself  consciously  contains,  presents,  and 
fulfils  the  whole  meaning  involved  in  the  idea  of  Being ; 
or  in  other  words  that  A  is  not  a  mere  passing  thrill  of 
human  experience,  but  is  an  absolute  experience,  self- 
determined,  self-contained,  individual,  whole,  and  there- 
fore final. 

The  sceptic's  hypothesis,  therefore,  so  soon  as  it  is  made 


374    THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

explicit,  wholly  agrees  with  our  own.     Nothing  can  be 
but  such  a  whole  experience. 


But  our  empirical  objector  may  finally  turn  upon  us 
with  another  version  of  his  parable.  "  Who,"  he  may 
say,  "  could  for  a  day  attempt  to  hold  your  Fourth  Concep- 
tion of  Being,  and  still  face  a  single  one  of  the  most  char- 
acteristic facts  of  human  experience,  a  single  practical 
failure,  a  single  case  where  dear  hopes  have  to  be  re- 
signed, an  hour  of  darkness  and  private  despair,  a  public 
calamity,  or  even  a  sleepless  night,  —  who  I  say  could 
face  such  commonplace  facts  and  not  have  the  observa- 
tion thrust,  as  it  were,  upon  him  by  the  seemingly 
irresistible  powers  of  this  world,  —  the  well-known  ob- 
servation :  '  You  reason  in  vain :  these  hard  facts  are 
against  you."1  Your  view  is  too  simple  for  this  our  com- 
plex real  world.  What  is,  does  not  in  any  essential  way 
fulfil  ideas.  What  is  real,  is  once  more  whatever  experi- 
ence shows  to  exist.  And  experience  contains  all  sorts 
of  non-fulfilments  and  irrationalities.  Chaos  or  order, 
joy  or  defeat,  tears  of  despair  and  shouts  of  victory, 
mysteries,  storms,  north  winds,  wars,  the  wreck  of  hearts, 
the  might  of  evil,  the  meteors  that  wander  in  interplanet- 
ary darkness,  the  suns  that  waste  their  radiant  energy 
in  the  chill  depths  of  lifeless  space,  —  these  all  are  facts, 
—  these  are  Beings.  Why  talk  of  Being  ?  What  Being  in 
itself  is,  may  well  remain  unknowable.  But  what  is  con- 
sistent with  the  existence  of  facts,  you  experience  when- 
ever you  observe  just  such  wretchedly  irrational  facts  as 


THE   FOURTH  CONCEPTION  OF  BEING  375 

these.  Whatever  they  mean,  they  involve  not  fulfilment, 
but  defeat,  of  purpose.  And  that  is  what  you  yourself 
experience  whenever  you  lose  what  is  dear,  and  face  the 
insoluble  mysteries  of  experience." 

The  practical  weight  of  such  objections  can  escape  no 
one.  They  constitute  in  one  aspect  the  well-known  prob- 
lem of  evil.  With  the  positive  solution  of  this  problem 
for  its  own  sake  we  are  not  yet  directly  concerned.  That 
belongs  later  in  these  discussions.  Our  concern  at  the 
moment  is  less  with  the  pathetic  than  with  the  purely 
logical  aspect  of  such  objections.  What  they  point  out 
is  that,  empirically,  there  are  countless,  if  essentially 
fragmentary,  empirical  facts  to  be  recognized,  which  do 
not  at  present  come  to  us  human  beings  as  the  embodi- 
ment of  certain  specified  purposes.  These  facts  appear 
as  involving  the  temporal  defeat  of  these  very  purposes 
in  just  these  passing  instants  of  wavering  search  for 
Being  wherein  we  now  are.  We  call  these  facts,  —  such 
facts  as  storms,  as  war,  as  defeat  and  despair,  as  north 
winds  and  sleepless  nights,  —  facts  belonging  somehow  to 
the  realm  of  Being.  Yet  they  are  facts  that,  when 
spoken  of  as  ills,  are  so  far  defined  with  reference  to  the 
ideas  which  they  just  now  temporally  defeat.  How  do 
they  stand  with  reference  to  our  definition  of  Being  ? 

I  reply,  for  the  first,  by  distinguishing  two  aspects  of 
any  unwelcome  facts,  such  as  the  empirical  observer  of 
human  destiny  may  find  to  be  present  in  the  world. 
These  two  aspects  are  indeed  not  to  be  sundered,  and  are 
here  distinguished  only  for  the  sake  of  present  conven- 
ience. Yet  we  shall  profit  by  taking  care  not  blindly  to 
confuse  them.  Any  unwelcome  empirical  fact  has,  namely, 


376    THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

its  own  positive  characters,  as  a  fact  that  in  our  human 
experience  appears  at  a  point  of  time,  in  certain  relations 
in  space,  and  with  numerous  other  positively  definable 
features,  all  of  which  the  thought  of  any  historian  or  any 
student  of  science  who  describes  the  fact,  may  define  as 
the  object  of  his  own  ideas.  In  addition  to  these,  its  own 
relatively  internal  and  positive  features,  the  unwelcome 
fact  also  appears  as  involving  the  present  temporal  defeat 
of  a  purpose  which,  but  for  this  fact,  might  here  have 
been  won.  Now  these  two  aspects  of  the  unwelcome  fact 
were  long  ago  distinguished  by  the  ancient  as  well  as  by  the 
mediaeval  students  of  the  problem  of  evil.  "Every  evil," 
said  such  students,  "  has,  as  a  positive  fact  in  the  world 
of  Being,  its  own  internal  perfections.  Its  evil  character 
is  due  to  its  relations  to  other  facts  that  coexist  with  it 
in  the  same  world.  Even  Satan,"  said  such  views,  "  is  an 
angel ;  and  even  as  a  fallen  angel  he  has  extraordinary 
perfections  of  nature,  which  so  far  constitute  a  good. 
His  diabolical  quality  is  due  to  the  misuse  of  precisely 
these  perfections.  The  best  in  wrong  setting  becomes 
the  worst."  Upon  such  bases  these  older  accounts  of  evil 
undertook  to  make  the  presence  of  evil  in  the  world  con- 
sistent with  the  well  known  thesis,  Omne  Ens  est  bonum, 
—  a  thesis  whose  historical  relation  to  our  own  conception 
of  Being  I  am  far  from  attempting  to  deny. 

Now  I  indeed  have  no  doubt  that  these  ancient  and 
mediseval  students  of  the  problem  of  evil  often  made  their 
own  task  far  too  light.  Nor  am  I  here  concerned  to 
accept  their  special  solutions  of  the  problem  as  to  the 
place  of  ill  in  a  divinely  ordered  world.  But  it  does  con- 
cern us  here  to  point  out  that  an  unwelcome  fact  of  human 


THE  FOURTH  CONCEPTION  OF  BEING          377 

experience  has  in  general  these  two  sorts  of  characters, 
namely,  the  characters  which  make  it  a  positively  defina- 
ble temporal  and  spatial  fact,  —  so  far  like  any  other  fact 
of  experience, — and  the  characters  which  make  us  say, 
that  it  defeats  this  or  that  human  purpose. 

Thus  physical  death  appears  in  our  experience  as  an 
occurrence  resulting  from  a  series  of  physiological  pro- 
cesses. As  a  natural  phenomenon  its  very  prevalence  is 
of  a  deep  rational  interest.  Meanwhile,  it  involves 
chemical  and  physical  changes  which  are  not  essentially 
different  from  countless  other  changes  going  on  in  the 
organic  world.  For  science  it  therefore  has  the  same  sort 
of  importance  that  any  other  event  in  the  biological  realm 
may  come  to  have.  On  this  side,  one  can  say  that  death 
is  definable  as  an  objective  fact  rendering  relatively  true, 
in  their  own  fragmentary  degree,  our  ideas  about  death. 
And  this  one  can  say  in  the  same  sense  as  that  in  which 
one  can  make  this  assertion  about  any  natural  fact  what- 
ever. If  our  theory  of  Being  assigns  to  every  objective 
fact  a  character  as  a  relative  fulfilment  of  the  ideas  which 
refer  to  it,  death  also,  in  so  far  as  it  fulfils  ideas  about 
death,  is  to  just  this  extent  no  instance  against  our  theory. 
Or,  in  case  you  will  to  know  the  facts  about  death,  would 
your  will  be  fulfilled  if  you  remained  ignorant  of  death  ? 
Or,  once  more,  as  facts  now  are,  for  us  human  beings, 
would  you  prefer  to  remain  as  innocent  of  any  knowledge 
of  death  as  much  lower  animals  than  ourselves  may  be 
ignorant  ?  If  you  ask  a  question  about  death,  is  your  will 
yet  fulfilled  in  case  experience  refuses  the  answer  ?  Would 
not  many  amongst  us  prefer  to  know  much  more  than  we 
now  do  as  to  when  and  how  we  ourselves  are  to  die  ?  Is 


378     THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

not  the  very  uncertainty  of  the  time  of  death  one  of  its 
ills  for  every  prudent  man  ?  So  much  then  for  one  aspect 
of  the  empirical  ill  called  death.  So  far,  to  know  its 
Being  is  relatively  and  imperfectly  to  fulfil  ideas.  And 
our  theory  defines  its  Being  in  terms  of  this  fulfilment. 

But  death  —  and,  above  all,  not  our  own  death  nearly 
so  much  as  the  death  of  our  friends  —  is  an  evil  in  so  far 
as  it  appears  in  our  experience  as  a  temporal  defeat  of  the 
purposes  of  human  love,  and  of  the  need  of  the  human 
world  for  its  good  men.  Well,  this  is  the  other,  and,  for 
our  own  theory,  indeed,  the  more  problematic  aspect  of 
death.  For  here  the  passing  fragment  of  fact  is  that  a 
given  human  purpose  is  so  far  defeated.  And  this  frag- 
ment of  fact,  as  we  admit,  is  obviously  somehow  a  part  of 
the  real,  —  a  fact  of  finite  Being.  And  yet  our  theory 
asserts  that  what  is,  as  such,  fulfils  purposes,  and  fulfils 
too  the  very  purposes  of  our  ideas. 

I  have  emphasized  death  as  merely  one  instance,  and  by 
no  means  of  course  the  worst  instance,  of  that  inestimably 
pathetic  story  of  human  defeat  and  misfortune  to  which 
our  previous  examples  a  moment  ago  made  reference. 
Now  of  course  I  accept  to  the  full  the  responsibility  of 
our  theory  to  account  in  the  end,  not  for  the  mere  fact 
that  some  finite  purposes  are  defeated,  but  for  the  fact 
that,  in  human  experience,  the  very  purposes  which 
refer,  as  ideal  strivings,  to  certain  objects  as  their  ends, 
appear,  so  far  as  our  more  direct  mortal  ken  extends, 
to  be  for  the  instant  defeated  in  presence  of  the  very 
objects  to  which  they  have  made  reference.  It  is  I  who 
fear  my  friend's  death,  and  hope  for  his  survival.  Yet 
he  dies.  I  have  thought  beforehand  of  my  object, 


THE  FOURTH  CONCEPTION  OF  BEING  379 

namely,  of  my  friend's  coming  destiny.  But  my  object 
has  so  far,  at  least  in  a  measure,  entered  into  my  ex- 
perience, and  has  overwhelmed  me,  whose  idea  denned 
the  object,  with  the  despair  of  non-fulfilment.  Here  is 
a  Being  in  apparently  direct  conflict  with  its  own  idea, 
and  an  idea  apparently  at  war  with  its  own  object.  How 
is  our  theory  to  explain  this  ? 

I  answer,  in  the  first  place,  precisely  as  the  mystic 
would  have  done  in  a  similar  case :  By  our  own  defini- 
tion of  Being,  you  have  not  empirically  found  your 
whole  final  object,  the  entire  and  individual  fact  of 
Being  that  you  seek,  so  long  as  you  seek  still  for  an 
Other.  It  is  precisely  as  the  Other  that  Being  is  not 
yet  empirically  present.  Loneliness  and  despair,  just 
because  they  are  dissatisfied,  look  beyond  themselves 
for  Being.  And  in  presence  of  death  you  do  thus  seek 
for  the  Other,  namely,  for  the  meaning  of  this  fact,  for 
the  solution  of  this  mystery,  for  the  beloved  object  that 
is  gone,  for  the  lost  life,  for  something  not  herq,  for 
the  unseen,  —  yes,  for  the  Eternal.  And  in  this  your 
search  for  the  eternal  lies  for  you  the  very  meaning  of 
death  and  of  finite  despair. 

As  Mary  passionately  cried,  "They  have  taken  away 
my  Lord,  and  I  know  not  where  they  have  laid  him," 
so  every  mourner  knows  precisely  this,  —  that  true  Being 
is  not  finally  here  where  death  is,  but  is  elsewhere.  The 
true  object,  then,  the  actual  Being  that  you  seek,  is  not 
found,  but  merely  seems  to  be  lost,  at  the  moment  of 
death.  Where,  then,  is  that  object?  Not  here,  Not 
here,  cries  despair.  Aye,  Elsewhere,  answers  our  teach- 
ing, Elsewhere  is  precisely  the  true  Being  that  you  seek. 


380     THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

Look,  then,  elsewhere.  Seek  not  the  living  among  the 
dead. 

But  you  will  reply:  Have  we  not  just  admitted  that 
death  itself  is,  like  any  other  amongst  our  countless 
human  disasters,  a  fact  of  experience  ?  Is  not  a  fact  an 
object?  Is  not  an  object  real?  Have  we  not  ourselves 
called  it  so?  Aye,  but  we  have  not  said  that  death  is 
by  itself  a  Whole  object.  Death,  as  far  as  it  comes  into 
our  experience,  is  indeed  a  glimpse  of  fact,  but  in  the 
moral  world  it  is  the  most  fragmentary  of  such  glimpses 
of  reality.  Whoever  faces  it  faces  nothing  that  he  finds 
as  an  individual  and  present  reality.  What  he  observes 
is  the  absence  of  precisely  what  he  himself  defines  as 
the  Whole  of  Being  that  he  seeks, —  the  very  longing  of 
an  unfulfilled  idea,  which  defines  the  Other,  and  looks 
elsewhere  for  the  reality. 

Now  our  theory  merely  consists  in  asserting  that  in 
every  such  case  the  reality  sought  is  a  life,  and  a  con- 
crete life  of  fulfilment,  and  that  this  reality  is,  and  is  in 
its  wholeness,  elsewhere  than  at  this  fragmentary  instant 
of  human  experience.  Human  experience  offers,  so  far 
as  it  goes,  only  a  confirmation  of  this  our  view.  For  we 
have  said  that  true  Being  is  essentially  a  Whole  Indi- 
vidual Fact,  that  does  not  send  you  beyond  itself,  and 
that  is,  therefore,  in  its  wholeness,  deathless.  Where 
death  is,  Being  in  its  wholeness  is  not. 

"  But,"  so  one  insists,  "  but  my  grief,  my  defeat,  my 
despair;  are  they  not  real?  And  are  they  real  as  deter- 
mined facts  ?  "  I  reply  :  Our  theory  is  indeed  responsible 
for  an  account  of  how  the  temporal  and  empirical  defeat 
of  a  specific,  although  always  fragmentary,  human  pur- 


THE  FOURTH  CONCEPTION  OF  BEING          381 

pose  can  be  an  incident  in  a  deathless  life  which  in  its 
wholeness  involves  the  fulfilment  of  a  purpose,  and  of  a 
purpose  which  includes  the  very  fragmentary  purpose 
now  temporally  defeated.  That  account,  in  its  more 
complete  statement,  belongs  elsewhere,  as  the  explicit 
discussion  of  the  problem  of  evil.  It  is  enough  at  pres- 
ent to  point  out  what  all  the  strongest  of  human  souls 
have  observed  and  reported  as  a  fact  of  experience; 
namely,  that  through  the  endurance  and  the  conquest 
over  its  own  internal  ills  the  spirit  wins  its  best  con- 
scious fulfilment.  What  if  this  moment  of  despair  be 
but  the  beginning,  or  the  fragment,  of  your  whole  life 
as  this  winning  of  the  object  that  you  now  seek?  Our 
theory  maintains  that,  in  fact,  this  is  the  case.  That 
the  fulfilment  of  the  whole  of  a  purpose  may  involve 
the  defeat  of  a  part  of  this  very  purpose,  every  experi- 
ence of  the  beauty  of  tragedy,  of  the  glory  of  courage, 
of  the  nobility  of  endurance,  of  the  triumph  over  our 
own  selves,  empirically  illustrates. 

For  tragedy  wins  our  interest  by  making  us  suffer, 
and  yet  consent  to  endure,  not  the  tragic  hero's  suffer- 
ing, but  our  own,  for  the  sake  of  the  spiritual  beauty  that 
we  thereby  learn  to  contemplate.  Courage  is  glorious, 
because  it  involves  a  conquest  over  our  own  conscious 
shrinking  in  the  presence  of  danger.  Who  fears  not 
knows  not  conscious  courage.  Endurance  is  noble,  be- 
cause it  includes  a  voluntary  defeat  of  our  own  unwill- 
ingness to  endure.  And,  in  general,  every  form  of  more 
complex  rational  life  means  a  triumph  over  ourselves 
whereby  alone  we  win  ourselves.  Whoever  has  not  faced 
problems  as  problems,  mysteries  as  mysteries,  defeats  as 


382     THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

defeats,  knows  not  what  that  completer  possession  of  his 
own  life  means  which  is  the  outcome  and  also  the  present 
experience  of  triumph  in  the  midst  of  finitude  and  dis- 
aster. For  in  the  victorious  warfare  with  finitude  con- 
sists the  perfection  of  the  spirit. 


LECTURE  IX 


LECTURE  IX 

UNIVERSALITY   AND   UNITY 

THE  concept  of  Being  often  passes  for  the  most  ab- 
stract of  human  ideas.  If  the  first  outcome  of  our  quest, 
as  presented  in  the  two  foregoing  discussions,  is  sound, 
the  true  concept  of  Being  is  the  most  concrete  and  living 
of  all  our  ideas. 


We  began  these  lectures  indeed  with  an  abstraction, 
with  the  contrast  between  telling  what  an  ideal  object  is, 
and  asserting  that  this  object  exists.  We  called  this  the 
contrast  between  the  internal  and  the  external  meaning  of 
ideas.  This  abstraction  Realism  carried  to  the  extreme, 
asserting  that  the  idea  finds  the  external  object  merely 
as  its  indifferent  fate.  All  relations  between  the  two  are, 
for  Realism,  additional  facts,  existent  over  and  above  the 
primary  indifference.  Hereupon,  however,  the  inner  self- 
destruction  of  Realism,  which  we  found  to  be  the  logical 
result  of  these  assumptions,  drove  us,  as  we  sought  for 
truth,  into  the  mystic's  realm.  There  we  first  learned 
something  of  the  deeper  meaning  of  the  ancient  thesis : 
Omne  Ens  est  bonum, —  a  thesis  which  indeed  appears  in 
Aristotle's  doctrine,  but  which  can  never  be  justified  on 
a  realistic  basis.  To  be  appeared  in  this  world  of  the 
mystic  to  mean  the  same  as  to  fulfil  the  inner  purpose 
2o  385 


386    THE   FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

of  ideas.  What  is,  is  as  such  the  perfect,  the  absolute, 
the  finality,  and  in  this  respect  we  have  indeed  found  the 
mystic  to  be  right.  But  the  mystic  sought  the  highest 
good  of  his  always  consciously  imperfect  ideas  in  their 
own  simple  extinction.  And  this  void  proved  to  be 
meaningless.  Here  then  was,  so  far,  no  positive  reality. 
We  therefore  abandoned  this  region  for  the  more  con- 
crete world  of  modern  Critical  Rationalism.  Here  the 
ideas  were  indeed  different  from  their  objects,  and  cor- 
responded to  them.  But  our  difficulty  in  this  realm  was 
to  define,  after  all,  how  our  objects  were  other  than  our 
ideas,  while  still  remaining  authorities  to  which  we  made 
valid  reference.  And  so  we  were  still  discontent  in  this 
world  of  Critical  Rationalism.  We  waited  until  it  should 
be  transformed  into  another. 

The  Fourth  Conception  of  Being  has  now  undertaken 
to  bring  into  harmony  the  motives  of  all  the  three 
other  conceptions.  What  is,  is  other  than  the  mere 
idea,  yet  not  because  it  externally  corresponds  thereto, 
but  because  it  completely  expresses,  in  a  form  that  is 
ultimately  individual,  the  very  meaning  that  the  finite 
idea  consciously,  but  partially  and  abstractly,  embodies 
in  its  own  general  form.  The  idea  wills  its  own  com- 
plete expression.  What  is,  fulfils  the  whole  intent  of 
the  idea.  What  is,  is  therefore  at  once  empirical,  for 
it  embodies  the  idea;  significant,  for  it  expresses  a 
meaning;  an  individual,  for  it  gives  the  idea  such  an 
expression  as  seeks  no  other  beyond.  Whatever  is  less 
than  such  a  completed  life  as  this,  is  a  fragment  of 
Being,  a  finite  idea  still  consciously  in  search  of  its 
own  wholeness,  a  mere  kind  of  relative  fulfilment  such 


UNIVERSALITY  AND  UNITY  387 

as  needs,  implies,  and  looks  to  another  to  complete  its 
own  purpose. 

On  the  other  hand,  every .  such  duality  of  idea  and 
object,  or  of  fragment  and  whole,  is  secondary  to  and 
subservient  to  the  one  will  or  purpose  which  the  idea 
partially,  and  the  completed  individual  life  of  the  ob- 
ject wholly,  embodies,  and  embodies  even  by  including 
the  fragmentary  will  of  every  idea.  If  you  want  to 
express  the  truth  in  its  wholeness,  you  must  not  merely 
say  first,  There  is  an  idea,  and  secondly,  There  is  also 
an  object,  and  thirdly,  These  two  correspond.  For  when 
you  speak  thus,  you  deal  in  abstractions ;  you  your- 
self so  far  seek  as  your  own  Other  the  very  mean- 
ing and  sense  of  these  abstractions :  and  merely  to 
speak  thus  is  to  define  neither  truth  nor  Being.  You 
must  rather  say :  There  is  an  embodied  life,  a  ful- 
filled meaning,  an  empirically  expressed  intent,  an  in- 
dividual whole,  that  attains  its  own  end.  This  is  what 
we  mean  when  we  talk  of  what  is  real.  To  be  such 
a  whole  life,  this  alone  is  to  be  real.  Now  of  this  life 
my  idea,  when  I  speak  of  an  object,  is  a  fragment,  as 
well  as,  in  its  relatively  present  fulfilment,  a  general 
type.  As  a  fragment,  my  idea  looks  elsewhere  for  the 
rest  of  itself.  As  a  type  of  imperfect  fulfilment,  it 
aims  at  the  complete  experience  of  the  whole  of  this 
type.  But  as  really  one  with  its  object,  my  idea  in 
thus  seeking  its  Other,  seeks  only  the  expression  of  its 
own  will  in  an  empirical  and  conscious  life.  But  this 
life  is.  For  that  any  idea,  true  or  relatively  erroneous, 
has  an  object  at  all,  implies  such  fulfilment. 

The  that  thus  comes  into  unity  with  the  what.     What 


388     THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL   CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

my  object  is,  my  idea  at  this  instant  not  only  imper- 
fectly defines,  but  fragmentarily  presents  in  its  own 
transient  way.  That  my  object  is,  is  true  in  so  far  as 
the  whole  what  of  my  object  is  empirically  expressed  in 
an  individual  life,  which  is  my  real  world. 

Thus,  although  Realism  assured  us  that  the  what  could 
never  predetermine  the  that,  the  essence  never  prove 
the  existence,  and  although  this  has  become  a  mere 
commonplace  of  popular  metaphysic,  we  now  have  found 
how  the  that,  the  very  existence  of  the  world,  prede- 
termines the  what,  or  the  essence  of  things,  and  the 
fact  of  Being  has  become  for  us  the  richest  of  concrete 
facts. 

For  despite  the  relative  failures  and  errors  of  our 
finitude,  the  real  world  cannot  fail  to  express  the  whole 
genuine  intent  of  our  ideas,  their  completely  understood 
internal  meaning.  Ideas,  in  other  words,  in  so  far  as 
they  are  consistent  with  their  own  completed  ideal 
purpose,  cannot  remain  unexpressed  in  a  concrete  life 
of  individual  experience.  For  if  they  remained  unex- 
pressed, their  final  meaning  could  only  take  the  form 
of  hypotheses  whose  verbal  statement  would  begin  with 
an  if.  The  final  truth  would  be  that  if  certain  empiri- 
cal expressions  took  place,  certain  ideal  results  would 
follow.  But  as  we  have  seen,  what  is  merely  valid,  is 
not  even  valid.  For  the  Third  Conception  of  Being 
failed  to  express  how  even  itself  could  be  true,  just 
because  it  left  us  with  a  mere  general  what,  and  never 
reached  the  that. 

Suppose,  in  fact,  that  what  we  have  with  equal  pro- 
priety called  the  meaning  and  the  will  of  our  finite 


UNIVERSALITY  AND  UNITY  389 

ideas  now  partially  embodied  in  this  flying  instant,  is 
to  remain  in  the  end  unexpressed,  so  that  only  an  if- 
proposition,  valid,  but  disembodied,  contains  the  truth 
of  the  world  when  viewed  with  reference  to  ideas. 
Then  still  you  do  not  escape  from  the  facts.  For  the 
fact  of  this  wow- expression  of  our  ideas,  has,  by  this 
very  hypothesis,  its  own  real  Being.  But  what  form  of 
Being  shall  this  fact  of  the  non-expression  of  the  mean- 
ing of  our  ideas,  this  refusal  of  the  universe  concretely 
to  fulfil  our  purposes,  actually  possess?  Shall  this  brute 
fact  that  our  ideas  are  not  expressed  possess  the  reality 
of  an  object  independent  of  all  ideas?  But  such  a 
reality,  as  we  now  know,  is  a  logical  impossibility. 
Moreover,  an  object  independent  of  all  ideas,  even  if 
such  an  object  were  otherwise  possible,  could  defeat,  or 
could  refuse  real  expression  to  no  idea  whatever.  For 
what  my  idea  seeks,  and  what  therefore  could  conceiv- 
ably be  refused  to  it,  by  another,  is  simply  its  own  ex- 
pression in  just  that  reality  which  it  means  and  intends 
to  possess  as  its  own  object.  The  reality,  therefore, 
which  shall  positively  refuse  it  expression,  is  ipso  facto 
the  reality  to  which  the  idea  itself  appeals,  and  is  not 
independent  of  this  appeal.  For  you  are  not  put  in  the 
wrong  by  a  reality  to  which  you  have  made  no  refer- 
ence ;  and  error  is  possible  only  concerning  objects  that 
we  actually  mean  as  our  own  objects.  The  object  that 
is  to  defeat  my  partial  and  fragmentary  will  is  then  ipso 
facto  my  whole  will,  my  final  purpose,  my  total  mean- 
ing determinately  and  definitively  expressed.  Hypothe- 
ses never  verified,  {^-propositions  to  which  no  concrete 
expression  corresponds,  have  part  in  existence  of  course, 


390    THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL   CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

but  only  as  fragments  of  ideas.  They  exist  only  as 
errors  take  place.  I  can  be  in  partial  error,  but  only 
because  at  this  instant  I  may  imperfectly  grasp  my  own 
whole  meaning  as  I  refer  to  my  object.  My  will,  as  it 
is  now  transiently  embodied,  can  fail  in  any  partial 
way  of  realization,  but  only  because  I  now  fail  to  be 
wholly  aware  of  my  own  will.  Therefore  hypothetical 
propositions  counter  to  fact  are  possible  only  as  frag- 
ments. But  however  far  I  wander  in  the  wildernesses 
of  my  temporal  experience,  the  eternal  fulfilment  of 
my  own  life  encompasses  me.  I  escape  not  from  the 
meshes  of  the  net  of  my  own  will.  I  fail  at  this  in- 
stant to  observe  this  fact,  merely  because  of  the  imper- 
fection of  my  momentary  form  of  human  consciousness. 
I  interpret  my  facts  hypothetically  and  often  falsely,  in 
so  far  as  I  fail  to  grasp  just  now  my  own  whole 
purpose. 

Schopenhauer  defines  my  world  as  my  own  will.  If  by 
my  will  he  meant  the  individual  embodiment  and  expres- 
sion of  the  whole  meaning  of  my  ideas,  he  would  thus  be 
right.  But  then  he  would  indeed  be  no  pessimist.  For 
the  longing  and  the  misery  of  finitude  that  in  my  present 
form  of  human  consciousness  now  so  frequently  bound 
the  horizon  of  my  darkened  instants  of  fragmentary  expe- 
rience —  this  longing  and  misery,  when  they  beset  me,  I 
say,  involve  that  very  search  for  Another,  that  very  dis- 
satisfaction with  the  abstractness  and  dreary  generality  of 
my  present  ideas,  which  I  express  in  my  own  way  when- 
ever, out  of  the  depths,  I  cry  after  Reality.  People  often 
object  to  Schopenhauer's  view  of  the  world  as  the  will, 
that  that  doctrine,  as  Schopenhauer  frequently  expresses 


UNIVERSALITY   AND   UNITY  391 

it,  is  a  mere  Animism.  We  know,  they  say,  that  the 
world  is  real ;  but  how  should  we  know  that  its  inner 
Being,  so  foreign  to  ours,  resembles  our  own  will  ?  But 
our  own  Fourth  Conception  of  Being  is  not  in  the  older 
sense  animistic.  For  it  does  not  first  say,  The  world  is 
known  to  be  real,  and  then  add,  And  we  conjecture  that  this 
reality  resembles  that  of  our  own  will.  What  our  view 
asserts  is  that  the  world  is  and  can  be  real  only  as  the 
object  expressing  in  final,  in  individual  form,  the  whole 
meaning  which  our  finite  will,  imperfectly  embodied  in 
fleeting  instants,  seeks  and  attempts  to  define  as  its  own 
Other,  and  also  as  precisely  its  own  ultimate  expression. 
In  other  words,  the  world,  from  our  point  of  view,  be- 
comes real  only  as  such  an  ultimate  expression  of  our 
ideas.  But  when  the  sceptic  here  retorts,  But  perhaps  then 
no  world  is  real  at  all,  we  reply  with  the  now  several  times 
repeated  observation  that  the  non-being  of  any  specific 
object  is  subject  to  the  same  conditions  as  the  Being  of 
all  things.  What  is  not,  is  not,  merely  because  our 
complete  object,  the  complete  expression  of  our  whole 
meaning,  when,  in  this  transient  moment,  we  speak  of  the 
thing  that  is  not,  excludes  its  presence.  The  very  possi- 
bility of  our  ignorance  and  error  implies  the  presence  of 
the  whole  self-conscious  truth. 

II 

Results  in  philosophy  must  needs  lead  to  new  problems. 
With  this  definition  in  mind  of  what  it  is  to  be,  how  shall 
we  next  undertake  to  describe  that  more  special  constitu- 
tion of  the  world  which  our  concept  of  Being  involves  ? 

The  general  title  of  our  course  called  attention  to  a 


392    THE  FOUR   HISTORICAL   CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

certain  well-known  problem  for  which  we  are  now  at 
length  fully  prepared.  The  World  and  the  Individual,  — 
these  are  now  upon  our  hands.  Their  Being  we  have 
defined,  not  only  in  general,  but  with  an  explicit  refer- 
ence to  both  of  them.  But  what  we  have  so  far,  for  the 
greater  part  of  our  discussion,  deliberately  ignored,  is  an 
attempt  to  describe  in  any  detail  their  precise  mutual  re- 
lations. It  is  just  to  these  relations  that  we  shall  hence- 
forth devote  ourselves,  both  in  the  brief  remaining  space 
of  this  first  half  of  our  series,  and  in  all  that  is  to  con- 
stitute the  second  half  of  these  lectures.  What  is,  as 
we  have  already  asserted,  is  the  World.  We  have  also 
asserted  that  it  is  the  Individual.  Both  terms  appear 
equivocal.  The  world  is  real,  —  ay,  but  what  world  ? 
The  world,  so  our  Fourth  Conception  has  answered,  —  the 
world  that  any  idea  views  as  its  own  wholly  expressed 
meaning  and  object.  "  Yes,"  you  may  say,  "  but  are  not 
our  ideas  many  and  various  ?  Is  it  not  one  thing  to 
think  of  mathematical  truth,  and  quite  another  to  think 
of  physical  truth  ?  Is  not  the  world  of  the  mathemati- 
cian a  different  object  from  the  world  of  the  moralist  ? 
Are  these  not  then  various  worlds  adapted  to  express  vari- 
ous meanings  ?  Do  these  worlds  constitute  one  realm,  — 
a  single  universe  ?  And  if  so,  how  ?  "  But  we  have  also 
said  that  the  individual  is  real.  Here  still  more  naturally 
you  may  ask,  "  What  individual  ?  "  Our  answer  has 
been  :  The  whole  individual  life  that  expresses  and  pre- 
sents the  meaning  of  any  single  idea.  But  you  will  still 
properly  be  dissatisfied.  You  will  say  :  "  Are  not  the  in- 
dividuals as  various  as  are  all  our  various  ideas  ?  And 
how  are  these  individuals  of  which  you  have  so  far  spoken 


UNIVERSALITY   AND  UNITY  393 

to  be  related  to  what  we  mean  when  we  talk  of  individual 
men,  of  souls,  of  moral  personalities,  or  of  one  man  as  dif- 
ferent from  any  other  man  ?  " 

Now  these  are  precisely  the  central  questions  of  re- 
ligion. These,  therefore,  are  the  problems  most  signifi- 
cant for  our  whole  quest.  These  two  are  issues  which  no 
one  who  attacks  the  central  concepts  of  metaphysical  doc- 
trine ought  to  ignore.  The  unity  of  the  world,  the  tri- 
umph of  the  divine  plan,  the  supremacy  of  good  in  the 
universe,  these  are  the  interests  which  religion  expresses 
by  asserting  that  God  reigns  as  a  rational,  self-conscious, 
world-possessing,  and  single  Being.  The  freedom  of  indi- 
viduals, the  deathless  meaning  of  the  life  of  each  person, 
the  opportunity  for  moral  action,  these  are  the  interests 
of  every  form  of  ethical  religion.  I  have  been  forced, 
before  approaching  these  issues,  to  dwell  so  elaborately 
and  so  long  upon  the  concept  of  Being,  because  that  con- 
cept is  no  abstraction,  but  is  precisely  the  richest  and 
most  inclusive  of  all  conceptions,  and  because,  until  we 
had  grasped  its  meaning,  any  speech  as  to  the  various 
beings  that  may  be  found  in  the  world,  and  as  to  their 
relations  to  the  whole  and  to  one  another,  would  have 
altogether  lacked  metaphysical  foundation.  But  our  task 
having  been  so  far  accomplished,  we  are  prepared  to  pass 
from  the  doctrine  of  what  it  is  to  be  real,  to  the  conse- 
quent theory  regarding  what  are  the  existent  realities. 
Hereupon,  however,  we  enter  upon  the  true  task  of  a 
religious  theory. 

The  problems  just  stated,  if  one  views  them  in  advance, 
appear  to  admit  of  two  opposed  solutions.  Of  these  the 
one  would  lay  the  emphasis  upon  the  unity  of  the  whole 


394    THE   FOUR   HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

world,  while  the  other  would  insist  both  upon  the  variety, 
and,  in  some  modified  way,  upon  the  relative  indepen- 
dence of  the  individual  lives.  The  one  thesis  could  be 
briefly  summarized  thus  :  This  Fourth  Conception  of 
Being  asserts  that  what  is,  expresses,  in  a  complete  life  of 
concrete  experience,  the  whole  meaning  of  the  ideas  that 
refer  to  any  object.  Now,  when  any  one  of  us  rationally 
speaks  of  the  universe,  of  the  whole  of  Being,  he  has  an 
idea,  and  this  idea  means  precisely  the  entire  world  itself. 
Whatever  life  pulsates  anywhere,  whatever  meaning  is  at 
any  time  fragmentarily  seen  embodied  in  flying  moments, 
—  all  such  lives  and  meanings  form  the  object  of  our 
metaphysical  inquiry.  Now  our  very  power  to  make  the 
whole  of  Being  our  problem,  already  implies  that  the 
object  of  our  inquiry,  whatever  it  proves  to  contain,  has 
as  the  fulfilment  of  one  idea,  the  constitution  of  a  single 
life  of  concrete  fulfilment.  All  varieties  of  individual 
expression  are  thus  subordinate  to  the  unity  of  the  whole. 
All  differences  amongst  various  ideas  result  from  and  are 
secondary  to  the  very  presence  of  one  universal  type  of 
ideal  meaning  in  all  the  realm  of  life.  All  appearance  of 
isolation  in  finite  beings,  all  the  fragmentarinbss  of  their 
finitude,  these  are  indeed  but  aspects  of  the  whole  truth. 
The  One  is  in  all,  and  all  are  in  the  One.  All  meanings, 
if  completely  developed,  unite  in  one  meaning,  and  this 
it  is  which  the  real  world  expresses.  Every  idea,  if  fully 
developed,  is  of  universal  application.  Since  this  one 
world  of  expression  is  a  life  of  experience  fulfilling  ideas, 
it  possesses  precisely  the  attributes  which  the  ages  have 
most  associated  with  the  name  of  God.  For  God  is  the 
Absolute  Being,  and  the  perfect  fulness  of  life.  Only 


UNIVERSALITY  AND   UNITY  395 

God,  when  thus  viewed,  is  indeed  not  other  than  his 
world,  but  is  the  very  life  of  the  world  taken  in  its 
wholeness  as  a  single  conscious  and  self-possessed  life. 
In  God  we  live  and  move  and  have  our  Being. 

The  other  thesis,  at  first  sight  apparently  opposed  to  the 
foregoing,  may  be  stated  as  follows  :  This  Fourth  Con- 
ception of  Being  appeals,  when  rightly  understood,  to  the 
self  of  each  individual  thinker.  And  it  appeals  to  indi- 
vidual thinkers  only,  whether  human  or  divine.  We  have 
often  spoken  in  the  foregoing  of  any  idea  as  if,  taken 
apart  from  other  ideas,  it  possessed,  so  to  speak,  a  selfhood 
of  its  own,  the  selfhood  imperfectly  exemplified,  tran- 
siently embodied,  in  your  consciousness  at  this  instant 
while  you  think  and  purpose.  Now  this  manner  of  speech 
might  indeed  be  said  to  lay  too  much  stress  upon  mere 
fragments.  A  momentary  human  idea  is  indeed  not  by 
itself  alone  a  self,  although  it  does  fragmentarily  contain 
the  partial  will  of  a  self.  But  the  meaning  that  it  con- 
tains belongs  in  truth  to  some  individual  thinker,  to 
this  soul,  to  this  man,  to  you  or  to  me.  Now,  however 
mysterious  may  be  the  difference  between  you  and  me,  we 
are  in  such  wise  different  beings,  that  the  unity  of  Being 
must  find  room  for  our  variety.  Above  all,  our  ethical 
freedom,  our  practical,  even  if  limited,  moral  independence 
of  one  another,  must  be  preserved.  The  world  then  is  a 
realm  of  individuality.  Hence  it  must  be  a  realm  of 
individuals,  self-possessed,  morally  free,  and  sufficiently 
independent  of  one  another  to  make  their  freedom  of 
action  possible  and  finally  significant. 

These  are  the  two  possible  interpretations  of  our  Fourth 
Conception.  It  will  be  our  attempt  in  what  immediately 


396    THE   FOUR   HISTORICAL   CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

follows,  in  this  and  in  the  next  lecture,  to  develope  and  to 
reconcile  both  interpretations.  We  shall  maintain  that 
the  unity  of  the  divine  life,  and  the  universality  of  the 
divine  plan,  define  one  aspect,  and  a  most  essential  aspect 
of  the  world  of  our  Fourth  Conception.  We  shall  also 
maintain  and  try  to  make  in  general  explicit,  how  this 
unity  is  not  only  consistent  with  the  ethical  meaning  of 
finite  individuality,  but  is  also  the  sole  and  sufficient 
basis  thereof. 

Ill 

The  unity  of  the  whole  world,  and  the  unversality  of 
the  idea  of  Being,  first  demand  our  attention.  We  have 
asserted  that  our  Fourth  Conception  involves  the  absolute 
unity  of  the  final  knowing  process.  In  precisely  what 
sense  and  for  what  reason  do  we  make  this  assertion  ? 

Our  concept  of  Being  implies  that  whatever  is,  is  con- 
sciously known  as  the  fulfilment  of  some  idea,  and  is  so 
known  either  by  ourselves  at  this  moment,  or  by  a  con- 
sciousness inclusive  of  our  own.  If  we  address  the  finite 
thinker,  and  consider  the  implications  of  his  knowledge, 
we  point  out  to  him  that  what  he  now  experiences  is  but 
a  fragment  of  the  object  that  he  means.  But  the  object 
that  he  means,  so  we  tell  him,  can  have  no  form  of  Being 
that  is  independent  of  his  meaning.  Nor  can  he  be  said 
to  have  any  meaning  not  now  wholly  fulfilled  in  his  pres- 
ent experience,  unless  that  very  meaning  is  present  to  an 
insight  that  includes  and  completes  his  own  conscious 
insight  according  to  his  own  real  intent.  This  essentially 
idealistic  account  of  what  it  is  to  be,  we  have  now  elabo- 
rately justified  by  an  analysis  of  the  very  concept  of  mean- 


UNIVERSALITY   AND   UNITY  397 

ing,  or  of  the  relation  of  idea  and  object.  If  any  fact,  not 
at  any  instant  consciously  present  to  the  finite  thinker,  is 
really  meant  by  him,  then  there  is  something  true,  about 
his  consciousness,  which  his  momentary  consciousness  of 
his  own  meaning  at  once  implies,  and  nevertheless  in  its 
internal  meaning  does  not  directly  and  wholly  exhaust 
for  him,  here  and  now.  And  this  relatively  external 
truth  which  is  intended  by  the  finite  consciousness,  and 
which  is  inclusive  of  all  that  at  any  instant  this  finite 
consciousness  finds  present  to  itself,  is  a  truth  whose  Be- 
ing can  be  neither  of  the  realistic  type,  nor  of  the  mystical 
type,  nor  of  the  merely  valid  type  of  Being,  nor  of  any 
form  except  a  conscious  form,  —  a  form  whose  existence 
includes  and  completes  what  the  finite  thinker  at  any 
moment  undertakes  to  know.  It  follows  of  necessity 
that  in  the  world  as  we  define  it,  there  can  exist  no  fact 
except  as  a  known  fact,  as  a  fact  present  to  some  con- 
sciousness, namely,  precisely  to  the  consciousness  that 
fulfils  the  whole  meaning  of  whoever  asserts  that  this 
fact  is  real. 

In  view  of  this  essential  feature  of  our  finite  situation 
as  thinkers,  it  follows  at  once  that  the  whole  world  of 
truth  and  being  must  exist  only  as  present,  in  all  its 
variety,  its  wealth,  its  relationships,  its  entire  constitu- 
tion, to  the  unity  of  a  single  consciousness,  which  includes 
both  our  own  and  all  finite  conscious  meanings  in  one 
final  eternally  present  insight.  This  complete  insight  is 
indeed  not  merely  one,  but  is  observant  of  all  the  real 
finite  varieties,  of  experience,  of  meaning,  and  of  life. 
Nor  is  the  external  insight  merely  timeless  ;  but  it  is 
possessed  of  an  inclusive  view  of  the  whole  of  time,  and 


398    THE   FOUR   HISTORICAL   CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

of  whatever,  when  taken  in  its  wholeness,  this  our  time- 
process  means.  This  final  view,  for  which  the  realm  of 
Being  possesses  the  unity  of  a  single  conscious  whole, 
indeed  ignores  no  fragment  of  finite  consciousness;  but 
it  sees  all  at  once,  as  the  realm  of  truth  in  its  entirety. 

This,  I  say,  is  the  unquestionable  and  inevitable  out- 
come of  our  Fourth  Conception  of  Being.  And  the  proof 
of  this  outcome  is  very  brief. 

For  whatever  is  has  its  being,  once  more,  only  as  a 
fact  observed,  and  exists  as  the  fulfilment  of  a  conscious 
meaning.  That  is  our  definition  of  Being.  But  now  let 
one  say,  There  are  many  facts,  ideas,  and  meanings  in  the 
world.  Each  of  these  exists  only  as  the  object  that  fulfils 
the  whole  meaning  of  a  knowing  process.  So  far,  then, 
there  exist  many  knowing  processes,  each  with  its  own 
meaning  fulfilled.  The  world  so  far  contains  many 
knowers,  many  ideas,  or  many  Selves,  if  you  are  pleased 
to  use  that  word.  But  our  Fourth  Conception  hereupon 
continues  :  Are  these  many  knowers  mutually  related  or 
not?  Answer  as  you  will.  Let  them  be  or  not  be  in 
any  specific  sort  of  mutual  relation.  Then  this,  the  fact 
about  their  relations,  exists,  but  exists  only  as  a  known 
fact.  For  our  theory  asserts  universally  that  all  which 
has  Being  exists  only  as  known  object.  The  fact  about 
the  true  relations  of  the  various  knowing  beings  and 
processes  is,  however,  a  fact  unintelligible  except  as  ex- 
pressing and  including  their  own  very  existence ;  and 
by  hypothesis  this  inclusive  fact  is  a  consciously  known 
fact.  That  the  various  knowers  are,  then,  and  that  they 
are  in  given  relationship  or  in  given  relative  indepen- 
dence of  one  another,  —  all  this  is  a  consciously  known 


UNIVERSALITY  AND   UNITY  399 

fact.  There  is,  in  consequence,  a  conscious  act  or  pro- 
cess for  which  the  existence  and  the  relations  of  all  the 
various  knowing  processes  constitute  a  present  and  con- 
sciously observed  truth.  But  this  assertion,  the  inevi- 
table consequence  of  our  doctrine,  implies  that  one  final' 
knower  knows  all  knowing  processes  in  one  inclusive  act. 

Moreover,  let  the  world  of  fact,  taken  in  its  whole- 
ness, possess  any  constitution  that  you  please.  Assert 
that  any  degree  of  multiplicity,  of  mutual  isolation,  of 
temporal  succession,  of  variety  in  individual  existence, 
or  of  other  dividing  principle,  variegates  the  universe, 
or  keeps  finite  acts,  meanings,  and  interests  asunder. 
Then,  by  hypothesis,  all  this  variety  and  mutual  isola- 
tion is  fact,  and  by  our  Fourth  Conception  of  Being  it 
all  exists  only  as  a  consciously  known  fact.  If  the 
sundered  finite  forms  of  consciousness  are  by  hypothesis 
not  mutually  inclusive,  their  very  sundering,  according 
to  our  conception  of  Being,  implies  their  common  pres- 
ence as  facts  to  a  knower  who  consciously  observes  their 
sundering  as  the  fulfilment  of  his  own  single  meaning. 

For  otherwise  the  sundering  would  exist  without 
being  fully  and  consciously  present  to  anybody;  since, 
in  so  far  as  a  is  sundered  from  5,  there  is,  neither  in  a 
alone  nor  in  b  alone,  a  consciousness  of  all  that  the  sun- 
dering implies  for  both. 

And,  finally,  the  knower  of  the  universe  in  its  whole- 
ness can  possess,  by  our  definition,  no  Being  that  is 
unknown  to  himself.  For  whatever  is,  is  consciously 
known.  And  if  the  being  of  a  is  unknown  to  a,  but  is 
known  only  to  another,  namely,  to  6,  there  so  far  exists 
a  fact,  namely,  the  relation  of  a  and  6,  whose  presence 


400    THE   FOUR   HISTORICAL   CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

to  knowledge  has  not  yet  been  defined.  But  if  what- 
ever exists,  exists  only  as  known,  the  existence  of 
knowledge  itself  must  be  a  known  existence,  and  can 
finally  be  known  only  to  the  final  knower  himself,  who, 
like  Aristotle's  God,  is  so  far  defined  in  terms  of  abso- 
lute self-knowledge. 

Herewith  the  purely  abstract  statement  of  the  conse- 
quences of  our  Fourth  Conception,  so  far  as  it  concerns 
the  unity  of  the  world,  has  been  made,  in  the  only  form 
consistent  with  our  conception.  What  is,  is  present  to 
the  insight  of  a  single  Self-conscious  Knower,  whose  life 
includes  all  that  he  knows,  whose  meaning  is  wholly 
fulfilled  in  his  facts,  and  whose  self-consciousness  is 
complete.  And  our  reason  for  asserting  this  as  the 
Reality  lies  in  the  now  thoroughly  expounded  doctrine 
that  no  other  conception  of  Being  than  this  one  can  be 
expressed  without  absolute  self-contradiction.  Whoever 
denies  this  conception  covertly,  so  we  affirm,  asserts  it 
whenever,  expressly  or  by  implication,  he  talks  of  Being 
at  all.  For  to  talk  of  Being  is  to  speak  of  fact  that  is 
either  present  to  a  consciousness  or  else  is  nothing.  And 
from  that  one  aspect  of  our  definition  which  is  involved 
in  the  thesis  that  whatever  is,  is  consciously  known,  all 
the  foregoing  view  of  the  unity  of  Being  inevitably  follows. 

Such  an  abstract  general  statement  of  the  results  of  our 
definition  of  what  it  is  to  be,  may  well  be  illustrated, 
however,  through  an  approach  to  the  whole  matter  of  the 
unity  of  Being  from  another  side,  namely,  from  the  more 
empirical  side.  For  in  conceiving  of  all  that  is  as  a 
single  whole,  as  the  life,  the  meaning,  and  the  conscious- 
ness of  a  single  Self,  we  are  not  limited  to  merely  uni- 


UNIVERSALITY  AND  UNITY  401 

versal  considerations.  Human  thought  has  long  been 
conscious  of  some  aspects  of  the  unity  of  Being.  The 
world  of  ordinary  experience,  of  common  sense,  and  of 
science,  has  already  its  provisional  unity,  which  our  own 
idealism  must  view  as  a  genuine,  if  fragmentary,  hint  of 
the  final  unity.  Let  us  then  next  briefly  study  this  rela- 
tive unity  of  the  empirical  world.  It  will  help  to  free 
from  barren  abstractions  our  own  insight. 

Our  Fourth  Conception  of  Being  is  through  and 
through,  in  one  of  its  aspects,  an  empirical  conception. 
We  derive  the  very  idea  of  fulfilment  and  of  purpose  from 
the  relative  and  transient  fulfilment  of  purpose  that  any 
one  of  our  more  thoughtful  conscious  moments  presents 
to  us.  And  despite  the  foregoing  use  of  abstractions,  it 
is  no  part  of  our  idealistic  plan  to  undertake  to  deduce 
a  priori  any  of  the  special  facts  that  may  exist  anywhere 
in  the  universe.  For  our  view  of  the  that  predetermines 
indeed  the  general  constitution  of  the  what,  but  not  our 
power  to  predict,  apart  from  experience,  what  nature  and 
finite  mind,  what  space  and  time,  are  to  contain.  Accord- 
ingly in  reviewing  the  empirical  world  with  reference  to 
the  special  nature  of  its  unity,  we  must  once  more  be_sub- 
ject  to  the  control  of  the  facts  of  the  universe  as  known 
to  common  sense  and  to  science.  We  must  frankly  recog- 
nize the  seeming  varieties  of  these  facts.  We  must  look 
for  unity  only  in  the  midst  of  their  empirical  diversity. 
We  must  see  in  what  sense  just  this  empirical  world  is  to 
be  interpreted  in  terms  of  our  Fourth  Conception.  And, 
in  fact,  when  we  thus  turn  back  to  experience  as  our 
guide,  the  knowable  universe  appears  a  refractory  object 
to  which  to  apply  our  theory  of  the  unity  of  Being. 

2D 


402    THE   FOUR   HISTORICAL   CONCEPTIONS   OF  BEING 

IV 

For,  apart  from  the  definition  of  the  ontological  predi- 
cate, the  subjects  of  which  we  usually  assert  Being  belong 
to  certain  well-known  but  sharply  contrasted  types.  In 
the  first  place,  we  ordinarily  ascribe  Being  to  nature,  to 
the  physical  world  so  far  as  it  is  contemporaneous  with 
ourselves.  We  say  this  whole  present  physical  world 
now  is.  We  regard  this  world  as  a  peculiarly  concrete 
instance  of  what  it  is  to  be.  And  in  particular  Realism 
often  prefers  present  natural  objects  as  its  instances  of 
Being.  This  natural  realm  is  spread  out  before  us  in 
space,  and  appears  to  be  of  an  infinitely  wealthy  variety 
of  constitution.  In  the  second  place,  we  ascribe  Being 
to  our  fellow-men,  and,  in  particular,  to  their  conscious 
inner  lives  as  beings  that  possess  or  that  are  minds.  This 
social  realm  is  also  one  that  we  may  call  a  second  region 
of  concrete  fact.  In  the  third  place,  and  in  a  very 
notable  way,  we  also  attribute  reality  to  the  whole  world 
of  past  events.  We  may  say  indeed  that  the  past  is  not 
now,  or  that  it  no  longer  is.  But  we  may  say  with  equal 
assurance  that  the  past  has  a  genuine  and  irrevocable 
constitution,  and  that  assertions  now  made  about  the  past 
are  at  present  true  or  false.  In  fact,  true  and  false  wit- 
ness in  most  practical  matters  relates  in  general  to  the 
past.  We  moreover  make  the  past  a  region  for  historical 
research  ;  or,  as  in  the  case  of  geology,  we  regard  past 
events  as  the  topics  of  a  strictly  inductive  and  very 
elaborate  natural  science  whose  work  is  done  in  the 
present.  So  the  past  is  for  us  a  very  genuine  being. 
Our  knowledge  and  interpretation  of  the  present  world, 


UNIVERSALITY  AND  UNITY  403 

whether  human  or  physical,  is  furthermore  based  upon 
our  views  as  to  the  nature  of  these  past  events.  For  the 
present  world  consists  for  us  of  observed  or  assumed  facts, 
denned  and  interpreted  in  the  light  of  presupposed  hap- 
penings. Any  given  present  object,  for  instance,  is  seen 
to  be  this  or  this  object,  because  we  recognize  it  as  identi- 
cal in  character  with  a  fact  supposed  to  have  been  known 
in  the  past.  In  the  main,  present  Being  is  thus  for  us,  so 
to  speak,  past  Being  warmed  over.  There  is  nothing  that 
we  regard  as  now  real  unless  by  virtue  of  the  express  or 
implied  judgment  that,  since  in  the  past  this  or  that 
has  existed,  this  or  that  present  existence  may  in  conse- 
quence be  assumed  or  accepted  as  a  continuation  or  as  an 
outcome  of  the  realm  of  past  Being.  Leave  out  the  realm 
of  the  past  from  our  conception  of  the  real  world,  and  our 
empirical  universe  at  this  instant  would  shrivel,  for  us, 
into  a  mere  collection  of  almost  uninterpreted  sensations. 
The  world  as  it  is  just  now  has  for  us  Being  as  a  supple- 
ment to  the  world  that  has  been.  We  shall  still  further 
see,  in  a  moment,  how  manifold  are  the  illustrations  of 
this  truth. 

In  the  next  place,  however,  we  ascribe,  although  with  a 
decidedly  different  emphasis,  a  form  of  Being  to  the  fu- 
ture, and  to  all  that  is  therein  to  happen.  The  future,  we 
indeed  say,  is  not  yet.  But  present  assertions  about  the 
future  are,  even  now,  and  despite  a  well-known  remark  of 
Aristotle's,  either  true  or  false,  and  that  quite  apart  from 
any  theory  as  to  fate,  or  chance,  or  freedom.  A  coming 
eclipse  in  any  given  year  is  regarded  by  an  astronomer  as 
reality,  when  he  adjusts  himself  to  its  Being  by  preparing 
an  expedition  to  observe  that  eclipse.  Again,  it  is  now 


404    THE   FOUR   HISTORICAL   CONCEPTIONS   OF  BEING 

true  either  that  I  shall  be  alive  a  year  from  now  or  that  I 
shall  not  be  alive.  Life  insurance  is  a  provision  made  to 
meet  future  facts  that  are  regarded  as  realities,  and  that 
are  respected  accordingly.  Future  Being  is  thus  the  fa- 
miliar object  of  hope  and  fear,  of  common  sense  prudence, 
as  well  as  of  predictive  science.  Omit  the  future  from 
your  scheme  of  Being,  and  your  world  loses  all  its  prac- 
tical human  interest.  To  be  sure,  the  future,  unlike  the 
past,  is  not  regarded  as  irrevocable,  and  a  believer  in  free- 
dom thinks  the  future  partly  contingent.  But  even  the 
contingent  future  event  has  its  Being.  Wait,  namely, 
and  you  shall  find  out  what  that  Being  is,  while  even  now 
the  principle  of  contradiction  applies  to  assertions  about 
it.  Suppose  a  judge  endowed  with  free  will,  and  delib- 
erating as  to  the  fate  of  a  prisoner  left  to  his  judicial  dis- 
cretion. While  the  prisoner  awaits  the  judge's  decision, 
the  fact  awaited  is  supposed  by  this  hypothesis  to  be  a 
contingent  fact.  But  is  not  the  prisoner  anxiously  ex- 
pecting his  own  discovery  of  the  Being  of  that  very  fact  ? 
And  while  he  waits,  is  he  dealing  with  a  mere  fancy  or 
dream,  or  a  baseless  unreality  ?  No,  the  dreaded  decision, 
although  future,  and  by  this  hypothesis  contingent,  is  a 
fact,  and  has  Being  ;  and  that  is  why  one  awaits  its 
announcement  with  such  concern. 

Present  Being  of  two  sorts,  namely  in  nature  and  in 
minds,  Past  and  Future  Being,  these  four  types  of  reality 
we  have  now  enumerated  as  types  recognized  by  com- 
mon sense  and  natural  science.  Our  study  of  the  Third 
Conception  of  Being,  some  time  since,  made  us  familiar 
with  the  still  different  sort  of  reality  ordinarily  attributed 
to  the  realm  of  moral  and  of  mathematical  truth.  This 


UNIVERSALITY  AND   UNITY  405 

realm  of  eternal  validity  common  sense  as  well  as  science 
recognizes  ;  and  as  we  further  saw,  when  we  dealt  with 
our  Third  Conception,  the  more  transient  world  of  prices, 
of  credits,  of  social  standing,  and  of  institutional  exist- 
ence, is  likewise  for  common  sense  a  realm  of  true  Being, 
yet  a  realm  neither  identical  with  nature,  nor  capable  of 
being  reduced  to  the  contents  present  within  any  number 
of  individual  human  minds.  We  have  abandoned  the 
Third  Conception.  But  our  new  conception  must  find 
room  for  the  typical  instances  of  Being  of  the  third  type, 
namely,  for  the  mathematical  objects,  for  the  socially  and 
morally  valid  beings.  And  now,  finally,  after  surveying 
all  these  so  various  types  of  beings,  we  have  to  recall  the 
comment  often  already  made  in  these  lectures,  and  to  as- 
sert that  not  only  these  different  kinds  of  realities,  but 
also  the  concrete  experiences  whereby  we  come  to  observe, 
and  the  ideas  whereby  we  ourselves  define,  describe,  and 
in  general  undertake  to  know  these  very  objects,  are  them- 
selves also  in  their  own  measure  real,  and  are  as  truly 
real  as  are  the  various  finite  objects  of  common  sense 
that  we  know. 

Now  our  Fourth  Conception  of  Being,  if  it  is  to  be  ade- 
quate to  the  demands  of  common  sense,  must  be  adjusted 
to  at  least  all  of  these  varied  types  of  beings.  Nature, 
and  the  minds  of  our  fellows,  together  with  the  contents 
of  these  minds,  the  past  and  the  future  beings  and  events, 
the  eternally  and  transiently  valid  truths,  and  our  own 
experiences  and  ideas  which  have  all  these  different  sorts 
of  Being  for  their  objects, — all  these  apparent  facts 
either  must  be  alike  comprehended  within  our  final  defi- 
nition of  what  it  is  to  be,  or  else  must  be  deliberately 


406    THE   FOUR   HISTORICAL   CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

explained  away  as  illusory  instances,  as  mere  appearances 
that  have  no  true  Being.  But  whether  accepted  or  ex- 
plained away,  these  sorts  of  beings  must  at  all  events  be 
taken  into  account  in  attempting  to  define  reality. 

V 

If,  looking  over  the  broad  field  suggested  by  the  fore- 
going list  of  the  sorts  of  beings  recognized  by  ordinary 
human  belief,  we  thereupon  attempt  to  reduce  to  unity  the 
characters  possessed  by  these  supposed  objects  in  so  far  as 
they  are  said  to  be  real,  our  next  impression  may  be  once 
more  that,  despite  our  Fourth  Conception,  the  Being  which 
the  various  classes  of  facts  have  in  common  can  only  be 
something  extremely  abstract  and  barren.  If  the  past, 
say  yesterday,  or  the  Silurian  period,  has  Being  in  some 
irrevocable  sense,  despite  the  fact  that  we  also  say,  It  no 
longer  is,  what  has  such  a  past  in  common  with  the  pres- 
ent, except  that  each  belongs  to  time  ?  And  have  both 
past  and  present  Being  any  less  abstract  character  than 
this  in  common  with  the  future,  say  with  the  coming 
history  of  Europe  five  centuries  hence  ?  Of  that  coming 
history  we  say,  It  is  not  yet.  If  in  a  sense  it  still  has 
Being,  because  it  also  is  even  now  the  object  of  possible 
true  or  false  assertions,  has  this  type  of  Being  still  any- 
thing but  the  name  in  common  with  the  past  or  with  the 
present  ?  Or  again,  if  one  compares  the  existence  which 
the  mathematician  attributes  to  the  roots  of  an  equation 
of  the  wth  degree,  or  to  the  irrational  numbers  and  dif- 
ferential coefficients,  with  the  existence  that  you  now 
ascribe  to  your  friend's  mind,  when  you  converse  with 
him,  —  in  what  but  the  name  do  these  types  of  Being 


UNIVERSALITY  AND  UNITY  407 

resemble  each  other  or  the  foregoing  types.  And  finally, 
when  you  say,  both  of  your  own  warm  present  inner  ex- 
perience, and  of  to-day's  price  of  wheat  in  Chicago  or 
London,  that  these  two  have  alike  real  Being,  or  when 
you  add  that  the  British  Constitution  is  also  a  reality, 
is  the  ontological  predicate  applied  to  these  different  ob- 
jects in  anything  like  the  same  sense  ?  And  so  does  it 
not  seem  that,  as  the  scholastics  would  have  said,  or  as 
Aristotle  himself  remarked,  Being,  despite  our  Fourth 
Conception,  persists  in  remaining  an  essentially  equivocal 
word  ?  Only,  to  us,  at  the  present  point  reached  in  these 
lectures  —  to  us  who  are  no  longer  realists  and  who  no 
longer  love  barren  abstractions,  the  equivocation  seems 
so  great  as  to  be  altogether  hopeless  ?  We  were  to  find 
unity.  But  are  not  the  facts  once  more  against  us  ? 

So  much  then  merely  for  an  impression  as  regards  the 
hopelessness  of  any  one  final  and  still  empirical  unifica- 
tion of  Being.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  if  you  look 
closer,  does  it  not  soon  become  afresh  evident  that  all 
these  various  forms  are  indeed  but  mere  variations  of  a 
single  theme,  mere  differentiations  of  one  idea,  whose 
unity  and  universality  remain  indivisible  amidst  all  its 
vicissitudes  ? 

For,  consider  :  What  did  we  just  observe  about  past 
and  present  ?  Attempt  to  abstract  from  any  reference  to 
past  Being,  and  what  becomes  of  any  concrete  notion  of 
present  Being  ?  Where  are  you  now  ?  In  this  city,  in 
this  room,  aware  of  yourself  as  this  person  ?  But  if  I 
ask  you  not  merely  how  you  know  all  this  to  be  really  so, 
but  what  you  mean  by  these  various  expressions,  you  at 
once  refer  me  to  the  past,  not  merely  for  your  warrant, 


408     THE    FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

but  even  for  your  very  meaning.  This  city  exists  for 
you  only  as  the  recognized  city,  that  is  familiar  to  you 
because  it  has  long  been  here.  In  itself,  apart  from  just 
your  private  recognition,  it  is  what  it  has  become.  It  is 
the  outcome  of  former  stages  of  its  existence.  This 
University  is  the  living  presence,  in  newly  developed  and 
growing  form,  of  its  own  historic  past.  That  is  what  the 
present  University  means.  Its  present  is  inseparable 
from  its  past.  You  too  are  yourself  because  at  this  in- 
stant you  relate  yourself  to  your  own  past.  The  mean- 
ing of  the  past  is  a  necessity,  if  you  are  to  give  to  your 
present  any  rational  meaning.  Nor  is  this  true  alone  of 
your  knowledge  about  yourself.  It  is  true  of  the  very 
Being  that  you  attribute  to  your  present  facts.  How- 
ever rapidly  any  Being  grows,  its  very  growth  means 
relation  to  its  own  earlier  Being.  And  no  recondite  dis- 
cussion of  the  supposed  permanence  of  substance  is  in 
the  least  needed  to  remind  you,  even  if  you  wholly  ab- 
stract from  the  traditional  doctrines  of  substance,  that 
whatever  novelties  the  present  may  contain,  these  very 
novelties  get  their  character,  both  for  you,  and  for  any 
one  to  whom  they  are  real  at  all,  by  virtue  of  their  rela- 
tion to  past  beings  and  events,  so  that  if,  per  impossibile, 
the  whole  past  of  temporal  Being  were  absolutely  stricken 
out,  the  present,  which  would  then  involve  no  historical 
relations  to  the  foregoing,  no  entrance  of  novelty  into  the 
old  order,  no  growth,  no  decay,  no  endurance,  and  no  con- 
tinuance of  a  former  process  in  new  forms,  would  simply 
lose  every  element  that  now  gives  it  rational  coherence. 

Far  then  from  being   merely  contrasted  with   present 
Reality,  past  Reality,  viewed  in  general,  is  a  correlated 


UNIVERSALITY  AND  UNITY  409 

region  of  that  very  whole  of  temporal  existence  in  which 
alone  the  present  itself  has  any  comprehensible  place  or 
even  any  conceivable  Being.  Nor  can  any  fact  of  nature, 
however  remote  from  us  it  now  seems,  be  viewed  by  us 
as  real  without  being  caught  in  the  net  of  this  universal 
time-order. 

But  just  so  the  future,  not,  indeed,  when  viewed 
as  to  its  unknown  details,  but  when  conceived  as  the 
region  into  which  the  present  is  passing  away,  when 
regarded  as  containing  the  goal  of  all  our  hopes,  and  the 
decision  of  all  our  cherished  interests  and  destinies,  —  is 
not  this  future  so  bound  up  in  one  world  of  Being  with 
the  present,  that,  if  we  could  indeed  abstract  from  future 
Being,  present  Being  would  again  lose  not  only  all  of  its 
practical  interest,  but  also  a  large  part  of  its  theoretical 
meaning?  Observe  any  object  that  you  please,  in  a 
world  of  time  and  change,  and  the  question,  What  is  it  ? 
is  in  fact  logically  and  inseparably  bound  up  with  the 
two  questions,  What  was  it?  and  Whither  is  it  tending? 
Consider  so  abstract  an  object  as  the  position  of  a  mate- 
rial particle  in  space,  as  studied  in  dynamics.  That 
position  so  studied  becomes  at  once  a  place  in  a  path, 
meaningless  except  as  viewed  with  reference  to  the  past 
and  future  positions  of  the  particle  under  the  system  of 
forces  acting  upon  it.  For  the  theory  of  heat,  the  pres- 
ent temperature  of  a  cooling  body,  is  a  state  in  a  series 
of  past  and  future  states,  determined  by  the  laws  of  the 
conduction  of  heat.  And  in  human  affairs,  just  as  pres- 
ent history  is  an  outcome  of  former  ages,  precisely  so  it 
is  a  prelude  to  a  future.  And  when  we  say  that  a  youth, 
or  a  nation,  has  a  future,  has  a  destiny,  we  refer  to  an 


410    THE    FOUR   HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

aspect  of  the  being  in  question  that  we  regard  as  a  very 
real  aspect.  The  assertion,  The  soul  is  immortal,  is  again 
an  assertion  about  the  supposed  real  Being  of  the  soul. 
It  has  a  reference  to  the  present  Being  of  this  soul,  yet  it 
is  ipso  facto  an  assertion  about  the  future.  And  common 
sense  asks  the  question,  Do  you  believe  that  there  is  a 
future  life?  Plainly  all  such  expressions  regard  future 
Being  as  a  reality,  and  inseparable  from  the  present. 

Yesterday,  to-day,  and  to-morrow,  the  past,  the  pres- 
ent, the  future,  and  all  the  ages,  thus  enter  the  realm  of 
conceived  temporal  Being  together.  So  surely  as  time 
is,  they  all  alike  are.  Their  sequence  is  the  actuality 
of  the  temporal  order.  Ignorant  as  you  are  of  the  de- 
tailed facts  of  any  of  them,  you  still  have  to  say  that 
temporal  Being,  in  its  wholeness,  has  to  be  conceived  as 
logically  coherent,  and  is  not  without  all  of  them  alike. 
If  the  future  is  for  you  uncertain,  much  of  what  you 
regard  as  the  present  is  uncertain  also,  and  the  same  is 
true  of  the  past.  These  three  sorts  of  Being,  then,  are 
not  to  be  sundered.  They  are  merely  distinguishable 
aspects  of  one  conception.  The  illusion  that  they  are 
separable  arises  only  when  you  neglect  both  their  con- 
tinuity, and  that  coherence  of  meaning  which  forces  you 
constantly  to  see  in  the  lines  of  your  friend's  face  his 
past  reflected,  in  your  own  memories  your  very  self 
expressed,  and  in  your  future  the  continuation  and  ex- 
pression of  the  present  Being  of  your  will.  And  once 
more  this  temporal  unity  applies  to  the  whole  of  nature. 
In  one  time  all  events  are  conceived  as  occurring. 

As  to  possible,  or  valid,  Being,  —  we  already  saw,  in 
our  former  discussion,  how  impossible  it  is  to  separate 


UNIVERSALITY  AND  UNITY  411 

that  type  of  Being  from  the  concrete  present  experience 
in  terms  of  which  you  define  it,  or  from  the  past  experi- 
ence, whose  laws  you  expect  to  find  repeated  when  you 
define  physical  possibilities.  If  you  write  down  an  equa- 
tion, and  prove  its  properties,  or  demonstrate  that  it  has 
roots,  you  actually  deal  with  presented  symbols  and  dia- 
grams, with  calculations  whose  outcome  you  now  ob- 
serve; in  brief,  with  data  of  experience  here  and  now. 
If  you  somehow  extend  into  infinity  the  valid  meaning 
of  these  present  experiences,  your  right  to  do  this  in- 
volves the  unity  of  your  present  mathematical  experience 
with  the  whole  realm  of  reality  to  which  you  refer.  And 
if  you  define  a  physical  possibility,  such  as  the  possible 
freezing  of  a  given  body  of  water,  or  the  possible  observa- 
tions of  a  coming  eclipse,  you  presuppose  that  certain 
laws  of  past  experience  and  of  past  Being  will  hold 
valid  in  the  future ;  and  by  virtue  of  this  relation  only 
can  you  undertake  to  say  of  the  possible  physical  expe- 
rience, It  is  valid. 

Validity  then,  if  one  rightly  affirms  it  at  all,  is  a  type 
of  Being  absolutely  bound  up  with  the  Being  of  present, 
of  past,  and  of  future  experience.  Its  Being  is  even  for 
common  sense  one  with  their  Being. 

Despite  all  the  contrasts  of  even  the  world  of  common 
sense,  we  deal  so  far  then  with  one  jconceived  infinitely 
complex  whole,  whose  Being  is  of  one  inclusive  type, 
though  differentiated  into  various  types. 

The  kind  of  Being  that  we  ascribe  to  the  minds  of  our 
human  fellows  remains  to  be  here  very  briefly  considered. 
As  a  fact,  and  as  we  shall  later  see  more  in  detail,  when 
we  come  to  the  problems  of  the  second  half  of  the  present 


412    THE   FOUR   HISTORICAL   CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

course  of  lectures,  the  Being  of  my  fellow,  in  general,  is, 
for  me,  inseparable  from  my  idea  of  my  own  Being.  As 
an  essentially  social  creature,  I  have  no  rational  and  self- 
conscious  life  for  myself,  except  by  virtue  of  literal  and 
ideal  contrasts,  and  other  social  relationships,  with  men 
whom  I  conceive  as  my  fellows.  I  can  indeed  change  or 
spare  very  many  present  relations  to  other  men  without 
losing  myself.  I  can  live  in  the  memory  of  past  social 
intercourse.  I  can  enjoy  rational  communion  with  ideal, 
or  at  all  events  with  unseen,  comrades,  as  children,  as 
poets,  and  as  many  wise  souls  do  ;  but  if  you  suppose  me 
even  in  memory  and  in  fancy  as  well  as  in  fact  absolutely 
solitary,  I  should  lose  my  very  consciousness  of  my  own 
meaning  as  this  person  living  in  this  world.  My  whole 
Being  then  is  bound  up  with  my  ideas  of  my  real  and 
ideal  and  unseen  fellows,  —  of  their  esteem  or  rivalry,  of 
the  tasks  that  they  set  me  to  do,  of  my  office  as  their 
comrade,  opponent,  rival,  enemy,  friend,  or  servant,  —  in 
brief,  —  of  their  relations  to  me. 

It  follows  that  their  Being  also  is  inseparably  bound 
up,  for  me,  with  my  notion,  not  only  of  my  present  self, 
but  of  the  past,  present,  future,  and  possible  world  that  I 
regard  as  real. 

And  now,  if,  with  this  whole  series  of  considerations  in 
mind,  we  survey  once  more  the  types  of  objects  to  which 
we  ascribe  Being,  we  find  that  the  very  conception  of  the 
various  types  of  Being  which  we  first  distinguished,  de- 
mands, even  upon  purely  empirical  grounds,  their  reunion 
in  one  whole  conception  of  what  it  is  to  be  real.  For 
what  we  have  discovered  is  not  merely  that  various  ob- 
jects are  in  physical  or  in  moral  ways  connected  in  the 


UNIVERSALITY   AND   UNITY  413 

real  world,  although  this  is  universally  true,  but  that  the 
fundamental  fashions  of  Being  themselves  which  we  as- 
cribe to  objects,  such  fashions  as  are  exemplified  by  past, 
present,  future,  determinately  possible,  or  mentally  real 
Being,  are,  just  as  ways  of  possessing  reality,  logically  in- 
separable, so  that  we  cannot  abandon  one  of  these  fashions 
of  Being  as  illusory,  without  at  once  abandoning  them  all, 
and  surrendering,  like  the  mystic,  all  of  our  finite  distinc- 
tions as  mere  dreams.  Thus  our  world,  however  many 
and  various  its  objects,  possesses  what  we  may  call  Onto- 
logical  Unity,  in  so  far  as  all  its  types  of  Being,  concrete 
and  abstract,  appear  as  various  aspects  of  one  type  of 
Being.  Nor  can  you  sunder  any  single  idea  of  an  iso- 
lated real  object  from  the  network  established  by  ideas  of 
reality  in  general.  The  whole  of  this  world  stands  or 
falls  together. 

Considerations  of  this  sort  are  by  no  means  stated  in 
ultimate  form,  for  they  have  been  based  upon  a  provi- 
sional acceptance  of  the  world  of  common  sense,  with  all 
of  its  classes  of  facts.  Yet  only  by  such  provisional  ac- 
ceptance can  we  get  before  us  the  facts  of  the  empirical 
world  ready  for  criticism.  What  we  now  see  is  that  all 
our  human  ideas  of  real  Beings  form  portions  of  a  single 
system.  All  varieties  of  individuals  and  of  individual 
ideas  must  be  subordinate  to  the  unity  of  this  system. 

VI 

Our  criticism  of  the  constitution  of  this  system,  as  we 
men  conceive  it  can  be  made,  for  present  purposes,  very 
summary.  We  have  no  right  to  limit  the  constitution 
of  universal  life  by  the  categories  of  human  experience 


414    THE   FOUR   HISTORICAL   CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

taken  merely  as  human  experience.  The  very  meaning 
of  our  own  ideas  regarding  the  interpretation  of  nature 
will  be  found,  in  our  later  cosmological  discussions,  to 
involve  the  thesis  that  the  realm  called  our  own  finite 
experience  is  only,  so  to  speak,  a  very  special  case  of  an 
universal  type.  When  the  modern  doctrine  of  evolution 
regards  man  as  a  product  and  outcome  of  nature,  our  own 
view  of  the  universe  will  in  the  end  have  to  accept  the 
extremely  subordinate  place  that  this  empirical  doctrine 
assigns  to  the  finite  being  called  man  amongst  the  beings 
that  people  nature.  Our  cosmology  must  not  be  anthro- 
pocentric  in  any  special  sense.  There  is,  indeed,  a  sense, 
in  which,  according  to  our  view,  any  rational  idea  in  the 
whole  universe  seeks  and  in  its  complete  development 
finds,  as  the  expression  of  its  ultimate  meaning,  the  whole 
of  the  universe.  But  we  have  no  right  whatever  to  re- 
gard man  as  the  only  finite  being  whose  ideas  are  rational. 
On  the  contrary,  as  we  shall  see  in  the  second  half  of  the 
present  course,  there  is  no'  possibility  of  giving  any  unity 
to  the  inner  meaning  of  human  existence  without  regard- 
ing man  as  a  single  group  only  in  a  vast  society  of  finite 
beings,  whose  relationships,  although  very  faintly  hinted 
to  us  in  our  experience  of  natural  phenomena,  are  as  con- 
crete and  significant  as  any  rational  relationships  can  be. 
It  is  precisely  in  the  history  of  the  process  called  evolu- 
tion that  we  have  some  indication  of  the  type  of  these 
extra-human  relationships  amongst  the  finite  beings  who 
are  present  in  the  world  in  the  same  sense  in  which  we 
are  present. 

In  consequence  of  such  aspects  of  the  natural  order,  I 
should   accordingly  reject  as  inadequate  the   fashion  of 


UNIVERSALITY  AND   UNITY  415 

dealing  with  nature,  and  with  the  universal  categories 
of  finite  experience,  which  was  most  characteristic  of  the 
forms  of  Idealism  prevalent  in  Germany  in  the  early  part 
of  this  century.  Our  historical  indebtedness  to  those 
forms  of  Idealism  for  our  Fourth  Conception  of  Being  has 
been  obvious  all  along,  and  needs  here  have  no  explicit 
confession.  On  the  other  hand,  the  application  of  this 
conception  to  the  theory  of  nature,  both  by  Schelling  and 
by  Hegel,  seems  to  me  to  have  been  as  far  astray  as  a 
larger  minded  modern  philosophical  doctrine  can  be.  It 
is  not  so  much  that  this  earlier  idealistic  philosophy  of 
nature  was  founded  upon  a  priori  methods,  and  disre- 
garded the  special  sciences  ;  for  as  a  fact  the  Naturphiloso- 
phie  both  of  the  Schellingian  and  of  the  Hegelian  schools 
derived  many,  perhaps  most  of  its  special  principles,  from 
the  text-books  of  science  then  current ;  and  its  use  of  ex- 
perience, if  capricious  and  fragmentary,  was  in  general 
intended  to  be  serious.  But  the  essential  principles  of 
the  application  of  idealistic  conceptions  of  the  unity  of 
Being  to  the  interpretation  of  nature  were,  in  those  sys- 
tems, false,  because  a  disposition  to  arrange  the  sciences 
in  an  arbitrarily  defined  hierarchy,  to  divide  nature  into 
sharply  contrasted  regions,  celestial  and  terrestrial,  inor- 
ganic and  organic,  extra-human  and  human,  predeter- 
mined all  the  speculative  interpretations  attempted.  We 
now  know  that  the  special  sciences  form  no  mere  hierar- 
chy ;  that  organic  and  inorganic  nature,  however  divided 
they  may  be,  are  also  very  profoundly  linked.  We  know 
that  the  ancient  contrasts  between  terrestial  and  celestial 
physical  processes  and  substances  appear,  the  farther  we 
go  in  the  study  of  nature,  the  less  significant.  We  know 


416    THE   FOUR   HISTORICAL   CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

that  the  unity  which  the  evolutionary  processes  indicate 
is  one  that  no  simple  scheme  of  the  formal  classification 
of  natural  processes  into  mechanical,  chemical,  and  or- 
ganic, or  even  into  those  of  living  and  non-living  nature, 
can  any  longer  attempt  at  all  exhaustively  to  characterize. 

So  much  the  more  must  an  idealist  to-day  be  un- 
willing  to  talk  of  nature  as  coming  for  the  first  time  to 
self-consciousness  in  man,  or  to  limit  the  categories  in 
terms  of  which  nature  is  to  be  interpreted,  to  those  which 
are  found  directly  serviceable  in  the  human  process  of 
cataloguing  and  describing  the  natural  phenomena  which 
come  within  our  finite  ken.  The  older  philosophy  of 
nature  was  not  merely  too  much  disposed  to  anticipate 
scientific  results  in  an  a  priori  way ;  it  was  also  too 
crudely  and  anthropocentrically  empirical  in  its  classifica- 
tions of  natural  fact,  and  in  its  attempts  to  unify  natural 
fact.  Our  doctrine,  indeed,  invites  man  to  be  at  home  in 
his  universe,  but  does  not  make  man,  in  so  far  as  you  first 
separate  him  from  nature,  the  one  finite  end  that  nature 
seeks. 

For  us  to-day,  as  I  may  as  well  forthwith  assert,  the 
conceptions  which,  from  our  idealistic  point  of  view, 
promise  to  admit  of  the  most  plastic  adaptation  to  the 
varieties  of  empirical  fact,  and  consequently  of  the  most 
universal  application  to  the  interpretation  of  the  inner 
life  of  nature,  are  our  social  conceptions.  These  at  once 
are  intensely  human,  and  capable,  as  Kant's  ethical  doc- 
trine already  showed,  of  a  vast  extra-human  generaliza- 
tion, in  so  far  as  we  take  account  of  other  possible  moral 
agents.  In  the  form  of  finite  social  intercourse,  amongst 
human  beings,  we  find  exemplified  a  type  of  unity  in 


UNIVERSALITY  AND   UNITY  417 

variety,  and  of  variety  recalling  us  always  to  the  recog- 
nition of  unity,  —  a  type,  I  say,  which  permits  us,  as  I 
believe,  to  go  further  in  our  hypotheses  for  the  interpre- 
tation of  the  vast  finite  realm  called  nature,  than  we  can 
go .  by  the  use  of  any  other  types  of  conception.  The 
social  life  finds  room  for  the  most  various  sorts  of  mutual 
estrangement,  conflict,  and  misunderstanding  amongst 
finite  beings ;  while,  on  the  other  hand,  every  form  of 
social  intercourse  implies  an  ultimate  unity  of  meaning, 
a  real  connectedness  of  inner  life,  which  is  precisely  of 
the  type  that  you  can  best  hope  to  explain  in  terms  of 
our  Fourth  Conception  of  Being.  When  I  tell  you  then, 
in  advance,  that  in  the  second  series  of  these  lectures  I 
shall  try  to  explain  our  relations  to  nature  as  essentially 
social,  and  therefore  in  their  deepest  essence  ethical  rela- 
tionships ;  when  I  predict  that,  without  transcending  our 
legitimate  rights  as  interpreters  of  the  empirical  results, 
we  shall  undertake  to  show  that  nature,  in  a  fashion 
whose  details  are  still  only  faintly  hinted  to  us  men, 
constitutes  a  vast  society,  in  whose  transactions  finite 
processes  of  evolution  when  viewed,  not  with  reference 
to  the  eternal  meaning  of  the  whole,  but  with  reference 
to  the  temporal  series  of  facts,  are  presumably  mere 
passing  incidents,  —  when  I  say  this,  I  indicate  in  some 
measure  how  our  Idealism  will  undertake  to  explain  the 
unity  of  the  world,  without  becoming,  upon  that  account, 
merely  anthropocentric  in  its  accounts  of  nature. 

There  is  a  sense,  as  I  have  said,  in  which  all  the  world 

may  be  viewed  as  centred  about  the  fully  expressed  inner 

meaning  of   any  finite  rational  idea.     But  then  human 

ideas,  as  in  fact  is  implied  in  their  very  conscious  sense  of 

2a 


418    THE    FOUR   HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

their  own  meaning,  are  not  the  only  ideas  of  which  this  can 
be  asserted.  It  is  not  until  man  views  himself  as  a  mem- 
ber of  an  universal  society,  whose  temporal  estrangements 
are  merely  incidental  to  their  final  unity  of  meaning,  that 
man  rationally  appreciates  the  actual  sense  of  the  con- 
scious ideas  that  express  his  longing  for  oneness  with  an 
absolute  life.  We  are  related  to  God  through  our  con- 
sciousness of  our  fellows.  And  our  fellows,  in  the  end, 
prove  to  be  far  more  various  than  the  mere  men.  It  is 
one  office  of  philosophy  to  cultivate  this  deeper  sense  of 
companionship  with  the  world.  And  precisely  in  this 
sense  of  deeper  comradeship  with  nature  will  lie  the 
future  reconciliation  of  religion  and  science. 

VII 

And  so,  when  we  speak  of  the  final  unity  of  the  world- 
life,  we  have  no  right  to  define  that  unity  merely  in  terms 
of  the  special  categories  of  the  distinctively  human  type 
of  consciousness.  Our  foregoing  sketch  of  the  manner  in 
which,  for  us  men,  present,  past,  future,  physical,  mental, 
mathematical,  and  moral  reality  seem  to  be  linked  in  a 
single  system,  is  not  therefore  by  itself  a  sufficient  basis 
for  stating  the  way  in  which  the  whole  meaning  of  real- 
ity gets  presented  to  the  single  unity  of  the  consciousness 
that  we  have  already  called  divine. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  very  essence  of  our  Idealism  lies 
in  asserting  that  just  in  so  far  as  you  have  become  con- 
scious, not  of  a  merely  abstract  form  of  possible  unity,  but 
of  a  sense  in  which  your  experience  already  unites  many 
in  one,  you  have  become  acquainted  with  a  fact  which  the 


UNIVERSALITY  AND  UNITY  419 

ultimate  nature  of  the  divine  plan  may,  and  in  general 
does,  vastly  transcend,  but  simply  cannot  ignore.  Your 
truth  from  the  absolute  point  of  view  will  appear,  indeed, 
as  a  partial  truth,  but  not  upon  that  account  as  untrue. 
The  interesting  doctrine  of  the  "Degrees  of  Truth  and 
Reality  "  which  Mr.  Bradley  has  lately  developed  afresh, 
although,  as  I  think,  Mr.  Bradley  has  given  this  doctrine 
too  negative  a  form,  remains  upon  its  positive  side,  the 
common  property  of  all  the  synthetic  forms  of  post- 
Kantian  Idealism.  Recognizing,  as  of  course  I  distinctly 
do,  the  close  historical  relation  of  what  I  am  saying  to  the 
whole  tradition  of  recent  Idealism,  I  can  only  point  out 
here  that  our  human  interpretation  of  the  unity  of  Being, 
however  much  it  may  be  supplemented,  in  however  dif- 
ferent a  light  it  may  appear  from  some  higher  point  of 
view,  remains,  in  its  own  relative  degree,  true,  just  in  so 
far  as  it  is  at  once  an  assertion  of  unity,  and  a  concrete 
illustration  of  that  unity  by  facts  found  somewhere  within 
the  realm  of  man's  actual  experience.  An  abstractly  im- 
mediate experience  of  unity,  such  as  the  mystic  sought, 
may  remain  either  barren,  or  a  mere  prophecy  of  some 
more  philosophical  doctrine.  A  hasty  account  of  the  unity 
of  nature,  such  as  Aristotle's  system  founded  upon  the 
optical  illusion  of  the  rotation  of  the  outermost  heaven 
about  the  earth,  is  already  more  concrete  in  its  unification 
of  many  natural  phenomena  in  a  single  scheme.  It  has 
been  superseded,  but  only  by  a  science  whose  natural  phe- 
nomena are  seen  to  be  in  still  more  significant  and  deeper 
relations.  Our  own  present  largest  generalization,  which 
unites  the  things  and  processes  of  nature  and  mind  in  one 
in  the  way  just  indicated,  may  need  very  real  correction 


420    THE   FOUR   HISTORICAL   CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

from  an  absolute  point  of  view.  Yet  this  preliminary 
unification  has  its  truth.  , 

In  particular,  however,  as  to  the  special  features  of 
our  view  of  nature,  our  human  experience  of  space- 
relations  is  obviously  so  special  in  its  type  that  this 
our  view  of  the  space-world  may  be  frankly  regarded, 
I  think,  as  something  of  decidedly  limited  truth.  It 
is  fairly  inconceivable  that  from  the  point  of  view  of 
experience  in  general,  our  space-form  should  remain  as 
more  than  a  fragmentary  perspective  effect,  so  to  speak, 
or  in  other  words,  as  more  than  what  one  might  call  a 
relatively  valid  finite  point  of  view.  The  facts  which 
we  view  as  related  to  one  another  in  space  must  in- 
deed be  viewed  by  a  larger  experience  than  ours,  as 
present  and  as  linked.  But  our  way  of  interpreting  the 
linkage  is  obviously  human,  and  is  probably  only  a  very 
special  case  of  the  experience  of  the  various  aspects  of 
coexistent  meaning  in  the  world  of  the  final  experience. 

In  another  way,  while  time  as  the  form  of  ethically  sig- 
nificant process  has  doubtless  a  far  deeper  truth,  temporal 
succession  is  subject  to  a  perfectly  arbitrary  limitation  of 
what  one  may  call  the  time-span  of  our  human  conscious- 
ness. What  we  regard  as  a  present  instant  is  neither  a 
truly  instantaneous  mere  Now,  having  no  finite  length,  nor 
a  duration  long  enough  to  enable  us  to  survey  at  a  glance 
anywhere  nearly  as  considerable  a  whole  of  successively 
realized  meaning  as  we  desire  for  any  one  of  our  more 
rational  human  purposes,  whether  thoughtful,  or  artistic, 
or  practical.  Our  human  time-consciousness  is  essentially 
ill  adapted  for  observing  the  whole  of  any  one  of  even 
our  most  familiar  meanings.  In  other  words,  for  us  men, 


UNIVERSALITY  AND  UNITY  421 

"  the  present  instant,"  so-called,  has  at  once  temporal  suc- 
cession, the  earlier  and  the  later,  included  within  it,  and 
it  has  a  decidedly,  and,  in  fact,  a  very  inconveniently  and 
arbitrarily,  limited  length.  What  happens  so  rapidly  or 
so  slowly  that  we  fail  to  accommodate  to  the  events  our 
ability  to  take  note  of  the  succession  as  a  present  and 
given  fact,  all  such  too  rapid  or  too  slow  series  of  occur- 
rences, we  fail  directly  to  note  as  matters  of  clear  con- 
sciousness. Hence,  we  constantly  lose  sight  even  of  our 
own  trains  of  thought  and  action,  even  in  instances  where 
we  most  want  to  survey  them.  Our  brief,  but  still  by 
no  means  indefinitely  small  time-span  of  consciousness, 
determines  in  this  way  our  whole  human  form  of  expe- 
rience, and  of  course  limits  the  ethical  meaning  of  our 
conduct.  Yet  how  long  a  temporal  period,  how  much 
duration,  shall  constitute  the  finite  interval  viewed  by  a 
given  form  of  consciousness  as  a  now,  is  a  wholly  arbitrary 
matter,  so  long  as  now  means  not  the  ideal  mathematical 
now,  —  the  negation  of  all  duration,  the  mere  point  be- 
tween present  and  future,  but  rather  a  period,  a  succession 
of  events,  a  finite  duration.  In  our  consciousness,  how- 
ever, the  now  of  experience  does  mean  just  such  an  actual, 
brief,  but  still  finite,  interval  or  period  of  time,  within 
which  and  during  which  events  succeed  one  after  another. 
Now  nobody  can  for  an  instant  defend  the  rationality  of 
supposing  that  every  possible  form  of  consciousness  must 
have  the  precise  human  limitation  of  time-span.  Yet  a 
notable  alteration  of  time-span,  quite  apart  from  any  alter- 
ation of  the  contents  that  succeed  one  after  another  in 
the  minds  in  question,  would  constitute  a  variation  of  a 
given  type  of  consciousness  whose  vast  possible  meaning, 


422    THE   FOUR   HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

both  psychological  and  ethical,  it  is  almost  impossible  to 
estimate.  A  consciousness  for  which  events  that  hap- 
pened within  a  millionth  of  a  second  constituted  a  definite 
and  observable  serial  succession  of  present  facts,  or,  on 
the  other  hand,  a  consciousness  for  which  the  events  oc- 
curring during  a  thousand  years  were  as  much  present 
at  once,  to  a  single  glance  at  temporal  succession,  as  are 
now,  to  us,  the  successions  that,  while  not  too  rapid,  occur 
within  a  time-span  of  two  seconds,  —  either  one  of  these 
types  of  consciousness  would  have  a  profoundly  different 
basis  for  estimating  the  significance  of  any  given  empiri- 
cal facts  of  succession.  The  acts  of  moral  agents  whose 
consciousness  thus  differed  from  ours  would  have  a  vastly 
different  meaning  from  our  own. 

Our  idea  of  what  it  is  to  be  conscious  is  therefore, 
logically  speaking,  an  extremely  variable  idea.  But 
for  that  very  reason,  our  Fourth  Conception  of  Being, 
while  it  certainly  cannot  be  applied  to  the  effort  to 
conceive  the  empirical  world  in  unity,  without  a  full 
recognition  of  possible  variations  of  the  form  of  con- 
sciousnesss,  has  all  the  more  freedom  in  undertaking 
the  general  task  of  viewing,  as  fragmentary  aspects  of 
one  whole  meaning,  the  varieties  of  nature  and  of  finite 
individuality.  For  it  is  precisely  the  wholeness,  and 
not  the  mere  fragmentariness,  the  presence,  and  not 
the  mere  absence  of  unity  in  our  consciousness,  the 
relative  attainment,  and  not  the  mere  postponement  of 
our  meanings,  which,  from  this  point  of  view,  guides  us 
towards  a  positive  view  of  how  the  unity  of  Being  is, 
in  the  midst  of  all  the  varieties,  attained.  How  in 
detail  the  final  unity  is  won,  what  categories  precisely 


UNIVERSALITY   AND   UNITY  423 

determine  the  relations  of  its  various  contents,  what 
contents  supplement  our  own  and  provide  for  the  final 
enrichment  of  the  Absolute  Life, — all  this  we  of  course 
cannot  predetermine.  Yet  what  our  conception  main- 
tains is  simply  this  :  — 

Survey  our  life,  consider  our  experience.  Look  at 
nature  as  we  men  find  it.  Take  account  of  our  tem- 
poral and  spatial  universe.  Review  the  results  of  our 
science.  In  all  this  you  will  discover  manifold  mean- 
ings relatively  obtained,  manifold  interrelationships  bind- 
ing together  facts  that  at  first  sight  appear  sundered, 
universality  predetermining  what  had  seemed  accidental, 
and  a  vast  fundamental  ontological  unity  linking  in  its 
deathless  embrace  past,  present,  future,  and  what  for 
us  seem  to  be  the  merely  possible  forms  of  Being.  Man 
you  shall  find  dependent  for  his  moral  personality  upon 
his  fellows,  upon  nature  as  a  whole  for  his  evolution, 
and  upon  his  own  ideas,  poor  and  finite  and  fleeting 
although  they  are,  for  his  very  consciousness  of  his  rela- 
tion to  the  universe. 

Well,  now,  in  addition  to  all  these  glimpses  of  unity, 
you  shall  see,  too,  countless  signs  of  fragmentariness, 
countless  seemingly  chaotic  varieties.  We  know  the 
formula  for  dealing  with  all  these  in  the  light  of  our 
conception.  These  are  precisely  the  facts  whose  frag- 
mentariness sends  us  to  Another  for  the  explanation, 
yes,  for  our  very  idea  of  any  one  of  them.  But  just 
such  cases  show  themselves  hereby  as  instances  of  uni- 
versal principles,  whose  concrete  meaning  is  not  yet 
empirically  present  to  us  at  this  instant.  Wherever  we 
question,  we  have  ideas,  but  not  yet  an  experience  of 


424    THE   FOUR   HISTORICAL   CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

their  objects.  Wherever  experience  contains  the  fulfil- 
ment of  a  meaning,  the  answer  to  a  question,  the  attain- 
ment of  an  empirical  unity,  there  we  have  so  far  present 
an  objective  content,  a  plan  relatively  fulfilled ;  and 
precisely  such  unities,  however  much  they  may  be  sup- 
plemented, cannot  be  ignored  in  the  final  unity  of  the 
whole  of  experience. 

And  so,  recognizing  as  we  do  the  limitations  of  our 
consciousness,  we  now  see  what  can  guide  us  towards 
a  concrete  definition  of  the  absolute  form  of  conscious- 
ness. Here  our  general  concept  of  Being  gives  us  our 
test  of  truth,  but  our  experience  shows  us  special  ways 
in  which  facts  not  only  can  be  unified,  but  are  unified. 
These  ways,  as  far  as  they  go,  are  for  us  valid  guides. 
Thus,  then,  our  general  and  relatively  a  priori  proof  of 
the  unity  of  Being,  in  the  early  part  of  this  lecture, 
has  itself  been  brought  into  unity  with  the  empirical 
view  of  our  real  world.  We  see  then  how  the  world 
of  our  Fourth  Conception  must  be  One.  We  catch  also 
a  glimpse  of  how  it  is  One. 

VIII 

In  sum,  then,  as  to  the  most  general  form  of  the  abso- 
lute unity,  our  guide  is  inevitably  the  type  of  empirical 
unity  present  in  our  own  passing  consciousness,  pre- 
cisely in  so  far  as  it  has  relative  wholeness,  and  is 
rational.  If  one  asks,  "  How  should  the  many  be  one, 
and  how  should  the  whole  take  on  the  form  of  variety?" 
I  answer,  "  Look  within.  You  may  grasp  many  facts  at 
once;  and  when  you  have  even  the  most  fragmentary 
idea,  your  one  purpose  is  here  and  now  partially  em- 


UNIVERSALITY  AND   UNITY  425 

bodied  in  a  presented  succession  of  empirical  facts." 
If  you  ask,  "  But  how  can  many  different  ideal  processes 
be  united  in  the  unity  of  a  single  idea  ? "  I  answer, 
"  That  is  precisely  what  in  your  own  way  you  can 
observe  whenever  you  think,  however  fragmentarily,  of 
the  various,  and  often  highly  contrasting,  ideas  that 
occur  to  your  mind  when  you  grasp  the  meaning  of 
any  hypothetical  or  complex  proposition,  —  such  as  the 
present  one."  If  you  ask,  "But  how  can  what  we  men 
call  present  and  future  Being  be  unified  in  a  single 
present  unity  of  consciousness  ? "  I  reply,  "  In  idea 
you  unify  them  all,  whenever  you  yourself  assert  propo- 
sitions as  now  true  of  past,  present,  and  future.  In 
concrete  experience,  you  find  a  past,  a  present,  a  future, 
unified  even  in  your  own  passing  moments  of  conscious- 
ness, despite  their  brief  span.  As  you  listen  to  my 
words,  several  words  come  to  consciousness  at  once, 
and  yet  as  a  succession.  The  first  of  three  words  is 
past  when  the  second  sounds,  the  third  is  yet  to  come 
when  the  second  sounds,  yet  all  are  at  once  for  you. 
Now  this  totum  simul  is  precisely  the  character  that, 
within  your  brief  time-span  of  human  consciousness, 
you  can  and  do  now  verify.  An  eternal  consciousness 
is  definable  as  one  for  which  all  the  facts  of  the  whole 
time-stream,  just  so  far  as  time  is  a  final  form  of  con- 
sciousness, have  the  same  type  of  unity  that  your  present 
momentary  consciousness,  even  now  within  its  little  span, 
surveys.  But  if  for  the  divine  mind,  some  still  more 
inclusive  form  takes  up  our  time-stream  into  a  yet 
larger  unity  of  experience,  all  the  more  is  what  we 
mean  by  temporal  succession  present  together  for  the 


426    THE   FOUR   HISTORICAL   CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

9 

Absolute  Experience.  Nor  does  this  mean  that  at  this, 
your  present  human  and  temporal  instant,  at  this  hour 
of  the  clock,  the  divine  and  final  moment  of  conscious- 
ness has  just  now  the  future  and  the  past  before  it  at 
a  glance.  For  your  own  grasp  of  the  contents  of  your 
passing  instant  of  consciousness  faces  at  once  a  series  of 
successive  events,  but  also  does  not  therefore  bring  before 
your  insight  all  the  successive  contents  of  any  present 
moment  at  any  one  temporal  point  within  that  present 
moment.  What  your  own  passing  consciousness  is  to 
grasp  at  once,  within  the  range  of  its  own  time-span,  con- 
sists of  facts  which  are  successive  one  to  another.  Now 
our  assertion  is  that  precisely  such  a  grasp  of  successive 
facts  in  one  unity  of  consciousness  is  characteristic  of  the 
Absolute  Consciousness  in  its  relation  to  the  whole  of  time, 
precisely  in  so  far  as  the  temporal  form  of  realization  is 
valid  at  all.  And  that  this  temporal  form  has  its  place 
in  the  final  unity  we  know,  just  because  time  is  for  us 
the  conditio  sine  qua  non  of  all  ethical  significance. 

The  case  of  temporal  unity  is  typical  of  every  instance 
of  the  application  of  our  Fourth  Conception.  In  so  far  as 
your  ideas  now  possess  internal  meaning,  you  grasp  Many 
in  One.  You  do  not  therefore  lose  the  many  in  the  unity, 
any  more  than  you  lose  the  notes  in  the  melody.  Ethi- 
cal meanings  do  not  involve  the  mere  blending  of  details 
in  a  single  whole.  Rational  insight  wins  unity  only 
through  variety. 

And  now  what  our  Fourth  Conception  asserts  is  that 
God's  life,  for  God's  life  we  must  now  call  this  absolute 
fulfilment  which  our  Fourth  Conception  defines,  sees  the 
one  plan  fulfilled  through  all  the  manifold  lives,  the  single 


UNIVERSALITY  AND  UNITY  421 

consciousness  winning  its  purpose  by  virtue  of  all  the 
ideas,  of  all  the  individual  selves,  and  of  all  the  lives.  No 
finite  view  is  wholly  illusory.  Every  finite  intent  taken 
precisely  in  its  wholeness  is  fulfilled  in  the  Absolute. 
The  least  life  is  not  neglected,  the  most  fleeting  act  is  a 
recognized  part  of  the  world's  meaning.  You  are  for  the 
divine  view  all  that  you  now  know  yourself  at  this  instant 
to  be.  But  you  are  also  infinitely  more.  The  precious- 
ness  of  your  present  purposes  to  yourself  is  only  a  hint  of 
that  preciousness  which  in  the  end  links  their  meaning  to 
the  entire  realm  of  Being. 

And  despite  the  vastness,  the  variety,  the  thrilling 
complexity  of  the  life  of  the  finite  world,  the  ultimate 
unity  is  not  far  from  any  one  of  us.  All  variety  of  idea 
and  object  is  subject,  as  we  have  seen,  to  the  unity  of  the 
purpose  wherein  we  alone  live.  Even  at  this  moment, 
yes,  even  if  we  transiently  forget  the  fact,  we  mean  the 
Absolute.  We  win  the  presence  of  God  when  most  we 
flee.  We  have  no  other  dwelling-place  but  the  single 
unity  of  the  divine  consciousness.  In  the  light  of  the 
eternal  we  are  manifest,  and  even  this  very  passing  in- 
stant pulsates  with  a  life  that  all  the  worlds  are  needed  to 
express.  In  vain  would  we  wander  in  the  darkness ;  we 
are  eternally  at  home  in  God. 


LECTUKE  X 


LECTURE  X 

INDIVIDUALITY   AND   FREEDOM 

IF  we  have  been  right  in  our  foregoing  discussions,  the 
first  principles  of  religious  doctrine  have  a  foundation  as 
simple  as  the  meaning  of  those  principles  is  inexhaustible. 
So  long  as  you  first  assume  that  the  world  of  fact  is 
merely  given,  independent  of  ideas,  is  found  by  us  as 
such  an  independent  reality,  then  indeed  every  effort  to 
interpret  the  world  quickly  loses  its  way  in  the  labyrinth 
of  our  experience.  But  remember,  before  you  are  thus 
lost,  that  the  world  is  real  only  as  the  object  of  true  ideas, 
and  then  your  fundamental  problem  at  once  becomes  that 
of  the  essential  relation  of  idea  and  object.  This  relation 
is  then  the  world-knot.  Nor  does  that  knot  prove  in- 
soluble. At  any  moment,  despite  the  mysteries  of  expe- 
rience, you  have  in  your  hands  the  essential  solution.  For 
the  relation  of  idea  and  object  is  essentially  the  relation 
of  a  partial  meaning  to  a  totally  expressed  rational  mean- 
ing. And,  as  we  have  already  seen,  and  in  the  present 
lecture  shall  further  illustrate,  the  relation  of  partial  and 
total  meaning  is,  at  the  same  time,  the  relation  of  any 
finite  will  to  the  expression  of  the  complete  intent  of  that 
same  will.  Without  contradiction,  therefore,  you  are  un- 
able to  assert  the  real  Being  of  any  world,  unless  you 
conceive  that  world  as  the  expressed  will  whose  partial 

431 


« 
432    THE   FOUR   HISTORICAL   CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

momentary  embodiment  you  even  now  observe,  whenever 
you  get  any  rational  idea  before  your  mind. 

This  view  of  the  nature  of  Being,  as  we  have  asserted, 
is  no  arbitrary  hypothesis,  but  is  what  a  close  examina- 
tion discovers  to  be  involved  in  the  very  presuppositions 
of  common  sense.  In  some  respects,  in  fact,  the  essence 
of  this  view  may  be  brought  home  to  our  ordinary  con- 
sciousness, if  we  remember  how  the  forms  of  space  and  of 
time  are  from  moment  to  moment  conceived  by  everybody 
as  limitless  and  as  universal,  and  as  predetermining  the 
constitution  of  the  whole  natural  universe,  while  this 
whole  infinity  of  both  space  and  time  is  viewed  as  homo- 
geneous with  the  space  and  time  present  at  the  instant  to 
our  own  consciousness.  The  well-known  case  of  the  prin- 
ciple of  contradiction  again  illustrates  how  the  conscious- 
ness of  the  moment  regards  itself  as  warranted  in  prede- 
termining the  essential  constitution  of  all  possible  beings. 
Our  study  of  the  conception  of  Being  has  been  intended 
simply  to  render  explicit  and  definite  what  kind  of  rela- 
tionship it  is  which  thus  links  the  instant  of  human  con- 
sciousness to  the  eternal  constitution  of  the  whole.  We 
have  seen  indeed  that  our  fourth  definition  of  Reality 
gives  us  no  right  capriciously  to  predetermine  any  of  the 
empirical  contents  of  the  world  not  now  present  to  our- 
selves. But,  on  the  other  hand,  we  have  undertaken  to 
assert  that  the  general  constitution  of  this  universe  is 
known  to  us  not  merely  in  so  far  as  the  principle  of  con- 
tradiction, or  as  the  forms  of  time  and  space,  give  warrant 
for  universal  assertions  about  reality  or  about  some  portion 
of  it ;  but  also  in  so  far  as  the  fundamental  structure  of 
the  universe  is  essentially  both  teleological  and  consciou:;. 


INDIVIDUALITY   AND  FREEDOM  433 

We  have  also  endeavored  to  state,  in  concrete  form,  ot 
what  nature  this  teleological  structure  of  Reality  proves 
to  be. 


In  the  foregoing  lecture  the  unity  of  the  idealistic 
world  engaged  our  attention.  In  the  present  lecture,  we 
are  to  consider  the  other  aspect,  —  the  Individuality,  the 
Variety  of  finite  beings,  and  the  relative  Freedom  of 
finite  acts. 

No  accusation  is  more  frequent  than  that  an  Idealism 
which  has  once  learned  to  view  the  world  as  a  rational 
whole,  present  in  its  actuality  to  the  unity  of  a  single  con- 
sciousness, has  then  no  room  either  for  finite  individu- 
ality, or  for  freedom  of  ethical  action.  It  was  for  the 
sake  of  preparing  the  way  for  a  fair  treatment  of  this 
very  problem  that  we  from  the  beginning  defined  the  na- 
ture of  ideas  in  terms  at  once  of  experience  and  of  will. 
As  we  later  passed  to  the  assertion  of  the  unity  of  the 
world  from  the  final  point  of  view,  we  have  never  lost 
sight  of  the  fact  that  this  is  the  unity  of  a  divine  Will,  or, 
if  you  please,  of  a  divine  Act,  at  the  same  time  as  it  is  the 
unity  of  the  divine  Insight.  The  word  "  Meaning"  has  for 
us,  from  the  outset,  itself  possessed  a  twofold  implication, 
—  not  because  we  preferred  ambiguity,  but  because,  once 
for  all,  the  facts  of  consciousness  warrant,  and  in  fact  de- 
mand, this  twofold  interpretation.  Whoever  is  possessed 
of  any  meaning,  whoever  faces  truth,  whoever  rationally 
knows,  has  before  his  consciousness  at  once,  that  which 
possesses  the  unity  of  a  knowing  process,  and  that  which 
fulfils  a  purpose,  or  in  other  words,  that  which  constitutes 


434    THE   FOUR   HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

what  we  have  from  the  outset  called  an  act  of  will  as  well 
as  an  act  of  knowledge.  It  is  essential  to  our  entire 
understanding  of  our  Fourth  Conception  of  Being,  that 
we  should  remember  the  truth  in  both  of  these  aspects, 
not  dividing  the  aspects  themselves,  nor  confounding  their 
significance. 

A  few  words  of  purely  psychological  analysis  may  then 
be,  at  this  point,  useful,  to  clarify  the  precise  relations  be- 
tween intellectual  and  voluntary  processes  in  our  ordinary 
consciousness. 

Popular  psychology  long  since  far  too  sharply  sundered 
the  Intellect  and  the  Will  in  the  empirical  processes  of  the 
finite  human  mind.  Viewing  the  intellect  as  a  passive 
reception  of  the  truth,  defining  the  will  as  the  power  to 
alter  facts,  the  popular  psychology  was  forced,  almost 
from  the  outset,  to  make  an  effort  to  reunite  the  powers 
that  it  had  thus  falsely  separated.  For  a  very  little  con- 
sideration shows  not  only  that  we  can  will  to  know,  but 
also  that  we  are  in  general  guided,  in  our  intellectual 
processes,  by  the  very  interests  which  popular  pyschology 
refers  to  the  will.  On  the  other  hand,  our  voluntary 
processes,  if  they  are  conscious,  are  themselves  matters  of 
knowledge.  For  our  conscious  volition  implies  that  we 
know  what  we  will.  In  consequence  of  these  obvious  con- 
siderations, a  more  modern  psychology  has  been  led  to  its 
well-known  doctrine  that  all  such  psychological  divisions 
are  rather  distinctions  between  different  aspects  of  the 
same  process,  than  means  for  telling  us  of  naturally  sun- 
dered or  even  of  separable  processes.  If  we  regard  the 
human  subject,  in  the  ordinary  psychological  way,  as  a 
being  whose  conscious  life  runs  parallel  with  the  highest 


INDIVIDUALITY  AND  FREEDOM  435 

physical  processes  of  his  organism,  we  get  a  view  of  the 
relation  between  the  intellect  and  the  will  which  is  far 
more  just,  at  once  to  the  natural  history  of  the  mind,  and 
to  the  deeper  meaning  of  the  inner  life  of  our  conscious- 
ness. View  man  as  a  natural  being,  and  you  find  him  ad- 
justing himself  to  his  environment,  acting,  as  they  say,  in 
response  to  stimuli.  The  world  influences  his  senses,  only 
to  awaken  him  to  such  functions  as  express  his  interest  in 
this  world.  Now  the  whole  life  of  the  organism  is  pre- 
cisely the  life  of  adjustment.  The  physical  activities  ac- 
companying consciousness  so  take  place  that  the  organism 
preserves  itself,  and  expresses  its  natural  bearing  towards 
its  world.  And  the  whole  life  of  consciousness,  accom- 
panying these  adjustments,  constitutes  a  more  or  less 
accurate  knowledge  of  what  the  adjustments  are.  The  life 
of  our  consciousness  is  therefore  a  life  of  watching  our 
deeds,  of  estimating  our  deeds,  of  predicting  our  deeds, 
and  of  interpreting  our  whole  world  in  terms  of  deeds. 
We  observe  no  outer  facts  without  at  the  same  time 
more  or  less  clearly  observing  our  attitude  towards  those 
facts,  our  estimate  of  their  value,  our  response  to  their 
presence,  our  intentions  with  respect  to  our  future  re- 
lations with  these  facts. 

But,  within  the  circle  of  this  general  unity  of  our  con- 
sciousness, various  distinctions  indeed  arise.  Sometimes 
the  outer  fact,  viewed  more  or  less  in  abstraction  from  its 
value  to  ourselves,  more  completely  fills  the  field  of  our 
consciousness,  and  then  we  are  likely  to  talk  of  a  state  of 
relatively  pure  Knowledge.  If  our  state  is  one  in  which 
an  idea  explicitly  appears  as  attempting  to  correspond 
to  the  presupposed  object  of  its  own  External  Meaning, 


436     THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

or  to  its  own  Other,  we  call  the  process  one  of  Thought 
about  External  Reality.  Sometimes,  however,  our  acts 
themselves,  viewed  as  efforts  to  alter  the  outside  facts, 
come  more  clearly  before  us  either  for  deliberate  estimate, 
or  for  impulsive  decision ;  and  in  such  cases  we  find  the 
narrow  field  of  our  consciousness  more  clearly  taken 
up  by  what  we  call  Will.  But  facts  are  never  known 
except  with  reference  to  some  value  that  they  possess 
for  our  present  or  intended  activities.  And  on  the 
other  hand,  our  voluntary  activities  are  never  known 
to  us  except  as  referring  to  facts  to  which  we  attribute 
in  one  way  or  another  an  intellectually  significant 
Being,  —  a  reality  other  than  what  is  present  to  us  at 
the  moment. 

It  follows  that  when,  for  general  purposes,  we  study,  not 
the  psychology,  but,  as  at  present,  the  total  significance 
of  our  conscious  life,  we  are  much  less  interested  in  the 
separation  between  knowledge  and  will  than  in  that  unity 
which  psychology  already  recognizes,  and  which  philos- 
ophy finds  of  still  more  organic  importance.  Conse- 
quently, when,  at  the  outset  of  these  discussions,  we 
pointed  out  the  element  of  will  in  the  constitution  of 
ideas,  we  were  dwelling  upon  precisely  what  for  the  psy- 
chologist appears  as  the  intimate  connection  between  the 
knowing  process  of  the  mind  and  the  motor  responses  of 
the  organism  to  its  environment.  When  we  know,  we 
have  in  the  first  place  present  to  our  minds  certain  con- 
tents, certain  data,  certain  facts,  it  may  be  of  the  outer 
senses,  it  may  be  of  the  memory  and  the  imagination. 
But  if  rational  knowledge  takes  place,  these  data  are 
not  merely  present,  but  they  also  take  on  forms ;  they 


INDIVIDUALITY  AND  FREEDOM  437 

constitute  ideal  structures ;  they  fulfil  our  own  purposes. 
These  purposes  consciously  correspond  either  to  what  an 
ordinary  observer  would  call  our  visible  responses  to  our 
environment,  or  to  what  a  psychologist,  who  looks  closer 
than  an  ordinary  observer,  would  find  also  to  involve 
memories,  or  hints,  or  fragments,  of  former  adjustments. 
The  result  is,  so  far,  that,  when  we  know,  the  facts  both 
of  sense  and  of  imagination  unite  in  our  minds,  into  the 
expression  of  a  Plan  of  Action.  And  thus  the  knowing 
process  is  a  process  partially  embodying  our  own  will. 
Upon  such  an  analysis  of  the  nature  of  ideas  all  the  fore- 
going discussion  has  been  founded ;  and  now  we  delib- 
erately repeat  and  emphasize  this  interpretation  in  order 
to  make  way  for  a  final  statement  of  the  place  of  the  will 
in  our  doctrine  of  being. 

From  this  point  of  view,  then,  the  contrast  between 
knowledge  and  will,  within  our  own  conscious  field,  is 
so  far  this ;  viz.,  that  we  speak  of  our  conscious  process 
as  a  Knowing,  in  so  far  as  all  the  data  are  woven  into 
one  unity  of  consciousness ;  while  we  speak  of  this  same 
process  as  Will,  in  so  far  as  this  unity  of  conscious- 
ness involves  a  fulfilment  or  embodiment  of  a  purpose. 
The  word  "Meaning"  very  properly  lays  stress  upon 
both  of  these  aspects  at  once.  For  what  we  call  a 
Meaning  is  at  once  something  observed  with  clearness 
as  an  unity  of  many  facts,  and  something  also  intended 
as  the  result  which  fulfils  a  purpose.  But  when  we 
take  account  of  External  Meanings,  we  speak  of  Thought 
in  so  far  as  we  seek  correspondence  to  our  presupposed 
Other,  and  of  Will  in  so  far  as  we  seek  to  produce  the 
Other  that  shall  correspond  to  the  Internal  Meaning. 


438     THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

Yet  here  the  distinction,  as  we  have  already  seen,  is 
wholly  relative  to  the  point  of  view. 

But  now  it  next  becomes  us  to  take  special  note  of 
this  latter  aspect  of  the  will,  —  an  aspect  upon  which 
the  popular  consciousness  lays  great  stress.  For  the  will 
is  usually  regarded  as  primarily  the  Cause  of  something 
which  but  for  the  will  would  not  come  into  existence. 
We  have  already  spoken  of  acts  of  will ;  and  the  popular 
view  declares  that  we  are  conscious  of  an  activity  which 
causes  states  of  consciousness  to  exist  within  ourselves,  and 
acts  to  come  into  existence  outside  of  ourselves,  and  which 
is  therefore  responsible  for  the  actual  production  of  new 
Being  in  the  universe.  But  if,  with  reference  to  the 
scientific  value  of  this  popular  view,  we  turn  to  psy- 
chology for  advice,  we  find  at  the  present  time,  in  that 
science,  decidedly  opposed  interpretations  of  the  sense 
in  which  the  human  will  can  be  regarded  as  a  cause. 
According  to  one  of  these  interpretations  the  word  "  act " 
is  properly  to  be  applied  merely  to  the  physical  process 
by  which  our  organism  gets  adjusted  to  its  environment. 
The  causes  of  precisely  such  physical  acts  are,  from  this 
psychological  point  of  view,  themselves  physical  causes. 
Our  consciousness,  according  to  this  same  view,  is  not 
itself  a  cause,  either  of  the  physical  act  whereby  we  ex- 
press our  will,  or  of  the  states  of  mind  themselves  which 
constitute  our  inner  intent.  Our  will  merely  accom- 
panies our  adjustment  to  the  environment,  and  consti- 
tutes our  own  consciousness  of  the  meaning  of  a  certain 
portion  of  this  adjustment.  Our  will  is  not  itself  one 
of  the  forces  or  powers  of  nature. 

On  the  other  hand,  a  traditional  doctrine,  which  has 


INDIVIDUALITY  AND  FREEDOM  439 

won  for  itself  no  small  hearing  in  psychology,  regards 
the  volitional,  or  active,  side  of  our  consciousness,  not 
merely  as  a  fact  in  itself,  but  as  a  cause  of  other  facts, 
both  physical  and  mental.  From  this  point  of  view,  the 
distinction  between  intellect  and  will  acquires  a  fresh 
importance,  and  declines  to  be  reduced  to  that  mere 
distinction  of  aspects  which  we  have  emphasized  in  the 
foregoing  account.  For,  as  is  often  said,  man,  in  so  far 
as  he  is  a  mere  knower,  accomplishes  nothing;  he  merely 
observes.  But  as  doer,  as  voluntary  agent,  he  is  the 
source  of  new  being ;  he  is  an  originator.  Will,  for 
this  view,  is  nothing  if  not  efficacious.  A  process  that 
merely  accompanies  and  reflects,  without  affecting,  the 
adjustments  of  my  organism  to  its  environment,  would 
be  no  true  will.  A  sort  of  consciousness  which  merely 
observes  that  from  moment  to  moment  my  inner  life,  for 
me,  seems  to  have  meaning,  would,  as  this  view  asserts, 
in  the  end  deprive  my  life  of  its  most  important  meaning. 
For  above  all,  as  they  say,  what  I  mean  to  be  is  an  origi- 
nator of  facts,  and  of  facts  that  but  for  me  would  not 
exist.  The  true  problem  regarding  the  place  of  the  will 
in  the  universe  arises,  according  to  this  view,  precisely 
at  the  point  where  one  asks,  Is  the  will  the  cause  of  any 
existence  other  than  itself  ? 

The  two  views  about  the  will  as  cause  thus  brought 
into  opposition  have  justly  played  a  great  part,  both  in 
the  psychological  and  the  metaphysical  controversies  of 
all  periods,  ever  since  the  meaning  of  life  began  seriously 
to  be  considered.  And  the  relation  of  this  whole  contro- 
versy to  the  deepest  interest  of  metaphysics  is  as  unques- 
tionable as  it  is  easy  to  misinterpret.  For  the  word 


440     THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

"  cause  "  is  a  term  of  very  various  meaning.  So  ambigu- 
ous and  obscure,  in  fact,  is  the  idea  of  cause  as  customarily 
used,  that  I  have  deliberately  preferred  to  avoid  even 
denning  the  issue  about  the  causality  of  the  will  until 
our  concept  of  Being  had  first  assumed  in  general  a 
definite  form.  Moreover,  even  at  the  present  stage  of  our 
inquiry,  although  we  must  indeed  deal  with  one  aspect 
of  the  issue  upon  its  own  substantial  merits,  we  shall 
do  best  to  avoid,  on  the  present  occasion,  any  thorough- 
going discussion  of  the  varieties  of  meaning  of  the  word 
"cause."  We  shall  do  best  merely  to  state  the  sense  in 
which  we  ourselves  regard  the  Being  of  facts  as  due  to 
the  will,  be  that  will  human  or  divine.  We  shall  then 
postpone,  until  our  second  course  of  lectures,  a  more 
precise  distinction  of  the  various  forms  of  causation, 
which  we  shall  learn  to  recognize  as  present  in  nature 
and  in  mind.  For  the  concept  of  cause,  properly  regarded, 
is  rather  a  cosmological  than  a  fundamentally  metaphysi- 
cal conception. 

To  metaphysics  in  general  belongs,  above  all,  the 
question  that  we  have  been  considering,  —  the  question 
what  it  is  to  be.  To  metaphysics  also  belongs  the 
problem,  What  fundamentally  different  kinds  of  Being 
are  there  ?  And  in  this  connection  the  relation  between 
God  and  the  individual  is  indeed  of  essential  impor- 
tance. From  the  metaphysician  you  may  also  expect 
the  answer  to  the  question,  To  what  principles  is  the 
actual  constitution  of  the  world  of  conscious  volition, 
and  of  ethically  significant  life,  due?  But  it  is  within 
the  realm  of  what  we  call  Nature,  —  namely,  within  the 
realm  of  finite  experience,  with  its  various  phenomenal 


INDIVIDUALITY  AND  FREEDOM  441 

distinctions  of  organic  and  inorganic,  of  apparently  liv- 
ing and  apparently  lifeless  beings,  —  it  is,  I  say,  in  case 
of  Nature,  that  the  diversified  processes,  present  to  our 
ordinary  experience,  arouse  questions  as  to  the  special 
kinds  of  causal  linkage  that,  in  any  particular  case,  bind 
one  fact  to  another.  It  is  in  this  world,  —  the  phenomenal 
or  natural,  the  essentially  fragmentary  world,  the  realm 
which  cannot  contain  its  whole  truth  within  itself,  —  it 
is  in  this  realm,  I  say,  that  the  special  problems  concern- 
ing physical  and  mental  causation,  concerning  active 
and  inactive  beings,  concerning  the  relation  of  physical 
organism  and  mental  phenomena,  most  properly  arise. 
And  we  shall  do  well  to  keep  separate  the  study  of  the 
whole  constitution  of  the  universe  (conceived  in  accord- 
ance with  the  general  principles  of  our  theory  of  Being), 
from  a  study  of  the  special  problems  of  the  phenomenal 
world.  It  is  not  my  present  purpose,  then,  to  exhaust 
the  theory  of  the  sense  in  which  will  is,  and  is  not,  an 
active  cause  in  the  natural  world.  What  can  at  present 
be  asked  from  us  is  a  general  statement  of  the  sense 
in  which  what  exists  expresses,  on  the  one  hand,  the  will 
of  God ;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  that  individual  will 
which  you  find  at  any  moment  present  in  a  fragmentary 
way  in  your  own  finite  consciousness.  I  shall  maintain 
that  both  God's  will  and  our  own  finite  will  get  con- 
sciously expressed  in  the  world,  and  that  no  contradic- 
tion results  from  this  statement. 

II 

At  any  moment  your  ideas,  in  so  far  as  they  are  ra- 
tional, embody  a  purpose.     That  we  have  asserted  from 


442     THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

the  outset.  Our  original  example,  that  of  the  melody- 
sung,  for  the  sake  of  the  mere  delight  in  singing,  remains 
for  us  typical  of  the  entire  life  of  what  one  may  call 
consciously  free  and  internally  unrestricted  finite  ideas. 
Now  what  we  in  the  first  place  have  asserted  in  regard  to 
such  ideas,  is  that,  precisely  in  so  far  as  they  are  whole 
ideas,  they  stand  before  our  consciousness  as  present  ful- 
filments of  purpose. 

Any  mere  purpose,  so  far  as  it  is  still  relatively  frag- 
mentary, or  is,  so  to  speak,  disembodied,  or  is  a  mere 
striving,  begins,  in  any  such  empirical  case,  the  little 
drama  that  is  acted  within  the  momentary  limits  of  a 
finite  consciousness.  In  saying  that  this,  at  first  disem- 
bodied purpose,  becomes  expressed,  whenever  any  con- 
sciousness of  such  an  act  passes  from  its  earlier  to  its 
later  temporal  stages,  —  I  merely  report  what  happens.  I 
make  as  yet  simply  no  assertion  with  regard  to  any  psy- 
chological or  physical  causation.  I  assert  as  yet,  in  such  a 
case,  no  effective  force.  I  mention  nothing  of  the  nature 
of  a  physical  or  psychical  tendency  such  that,  by  the  mere 
necessity  of  its  nature,  it  must  work  itself  out.  What  my 
consciousness  finds  when  I  sing  or  speak  is  that  a  certain 
meaning  actually  gets  expressed.  My  act  of  singing  takes 
place.  At  once,  then,  there  are  data  present,  there  are 
facts  of  consciousness,  and  there  is  this  significance  which 
these  facts  embody.  Whether  the  facts  could  have  come 
into  existence  in  this  way  unless  a  given  nervous  organ- 
ism or  a  given  psychical  entity,  endowed  with  specific 
powers,  subject  to  general  laws,  were  already  in  exist- 
ence, of  all  that  my  finite  consciousness  in  the  present 
moment  tells  me  nothing.  To  assert  any  such  thing  is 


INDIVIDUALITY  AND  FREEDOM  443 

so  far  to  assert  a  mere  psychological  or  cosmological 
theory.  The  basis  of  such  an  assertion,  if  it  has  any 
basis,  must  be  sought  outside  of  any  one  moment's  ex- 
perience. On  the  other  hand,  in  vain  would  any  psy- 
chologist, in  vain  would  any  realistic  metaphysician, 
attempt  to  rob  my  finite  consciousness  of  the  significance 
which  this  my  own  moment  of  singing  or  speaking  has, 
for  me,  embodied.  This  significance  is  a  matter  of  my 
experience.  Whatever  your  system  of  metaphysics,  the 
singer  can  say :  Here  at  least  the  world  has  meaning,  for 
lo !  /  sing. 

Now,  as  a  metaphysical  theory,  our  idealistic  doctrine 
with  regard  to  Being  in  its  wholeness  has  simply  main- 
tained that,  without  any  regard  to  a  doctrine  of  causa- 
tion, without  regard  in  the  least  to  any  specific  view  as  to 
the  psychology  of  mental  process,  the  whole  universe,  pre- 
cisely in  so  far  as  it  is,  is  the  expression  of  a  meaning,  is  the 
conscious  fulfilment  of  significance  in  life,  precisely  as  the 
melody  present  at  a  given  moment  to  the  singer  is  for  his 
consciousness  the  momentary  expression  of  a  meaning. 
And  so  our  theory  of  Being  is  not  founded  upon  any 
prior  doctrine  of  causation.  Cause  and  effect,  laws  me- 
chanical or  laws  psychological,  fate  or  freedom,  in  so  far 
as  any  of  these  have  Being,  are  from  our  point  of  view 
subject  to  the  prior  conditions  of  the  very  concept  of 
Being  itself.  If  nothing  can  be  except  what  embodies  a 
meaning,  we  are  not  first  required  to  explain  how  any- 
thing whatever  comes  into  Being,  or  how  anything  what- 
ever is  caused.  For  the  cause  of  Being  would  itself  have 
Being,  and  could  itself  exist,  if  our  analysis  is  correct, 
only  as  the  actual  expression  of  a  meaning. 


444     THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

The  unhappy  slavery  of  the  metaphysics  of  the  past  to 
the  conception  of  causation  has  been  responsible  for  some 
of  the  most  fatal  of  the  misfortunes  of  religion  and  of 
humanity.  That  the  existence  of  God  was  to  be  proved 
only  by  the  means  of  the  concept  of  causation,  was  one  of 
the  most  characteristic  of  the  presuppositions  of  an  earlier 
theology,  and  was  often  supposed  to  be  maintained  on 
the  basis  of  the  authority  of  Aristotle.  As  a  fact,  this 
method  of  dealing  with  the  theory  of  Being  was  false  to 
the  deepest  spirit  of  Aristotle  himself.  For  Aristotle's 
God  is  primarily  the  All-perfect  Being,  and  is  only  sec- 
ondarily the  subject  of  which  causation  could  be  predi- 
cated in  any  form  whatever.  But  however  that  may  be, 
the  theology  which  conceives  the  relation  between  God 
and  the  world,  and  between  the  world  and  the  individ- 
ual, as  primarily  a  causal  relation,  subordinates  the  uni- 
versal to  the  particular  in  theory,  and  the  significant  to 
the  relatively  insignificant  in  practical  doctrine.  The 
inevitable  results  of  any  such  inversion  of  the  rational 
order  is  a  world  where  either  fate  reigns,  or  absolute  mys- 
teries are  the  final  facts  ;  or  where  both  these  unhappy 
results  are  combined.  That  just  because  the  universe  is 
through  and  through  transparently  significant,  it  may 
later  prove  to  be  worth  while  to  regard  my  will  as  in  this 
or  that  respect  a  cause  of  certain  special  results,  is  intelli- 
gible enough.  But  the  genuine  significance  of  my  volun- 
tary process  is  always  an  affair  of  my  own  consciousness 
regarding  the  present  meaning  of  my  life.  You  will  in 
vain  endeavor  to  deduce  that  meaning  from  the  distinctly 
lower  category  of  causal  efficacy.  That  lower  category  of 
causation  always  implies  a  comment  which  somebody  else, 


INDIVIDUALITY   AND   FREEDOM  445 

viewing  my  act  in  a  relatively  external  way,  may  pass 
upon  me  from  without. 

It  is  indeed  metaphysically  just  to  assert  that  in  certain 
aspects  of  my  life  I  must  needs  be  regarded  as  a  cause, 
because  I  am  already  known  to  possess  conscious  signifi- 
cance, and  because  some  aspects  of  this  significance  turn 
out  to  be  causal.  But  you  can  never,  on  the  other  hand, 
discover  wherein  consists  my  significance  by  merely 
asserting  that  I  am  somehow  or  other  a  powerful  cause. 
And  precisely  so  it  is  in  the  case  of  God.  You  can 
indeed  say  that  this  or  that  fact  in  the  world  must  be 
viewed  as  a  result  of  laws  whose  source  lies  in  the  divine 
nature.  But  in  asserting  this  you  merely  lay  stress  upon 
a  result  of  that  conscious  significance  which  first  of  all 
attaches  to  the  Being  of  all  things,  and  to  the  life  of  God 
in  its  wholeness. 

I  cannot,  then,  too  strenuously  insist  upon  the  thought 
that  our  own  theory  of  Being  places  the  very  significance, 
both  of  the  whole  world  and  of  the  individual  life,  in 
the  actual  conscious  fulfilment  of  meaning.  Such  fulfil- 
ment, from  our  own  point  of  view,  is  the  only  reality. 
We  therefore  do  not  explain  the  existence  of  meaning 
in  the  world  by  looking,  in  the  end,  beyond  any  meaning 
for  the  cause  which  has  brought  the  significant  world  to 
pass.  To  view  the  matter  in  that  way  would  be  of  the 
very  essence  of  Realism,  and  would  involve  all  the  contra- 
dictions which  have  already  led  us  to  reject  the  realistic 
interpretation  of  Being.  Causation  will  find  its  place  in 
our  world,  but  as  a  mere  result,  —  a  partial  aspect,  —  a 
mere  item  of  the  very  significance  of  that  world  itself. 
For  causal  connections  have  a  place  only  as  expressing 


446     THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

their  own  aspect  of  the  meaning  of  things.  On  the 
other  hand,  the  mere  part,  causation,  will  never  appear 
in  our  account  as  the  source  of  the  whole  ;  nor  will  this 
causation,  which  is  but  a  very  special  form  of  Being,  or 
a  name  for  various  special  forms  of  Being,  ever  appear 
as  that  to  which  either  the  Being,  or  the  wholeness  of 
the  meaning  of  the  world,  is  due.  And  so  much,  then, 
for  the  mere  causal  efficacy,  either  of  God  or  of  man. 

In  consequence  of  these  considerations,  our  primary 
question  in  regard  to  the  finite  human  individual,  in  his 
relation  to  the  divine  life,  is  merely  the  question,  In  what 
sense  does  the  finite  Being  retain,  despite  the  unity  of  the 
whole  divine  life,  any  individual  significance  of  his  own, 
and  what  is  the  relation  of  this  finite  significance  to  the 
meaning  and  plan  of  the  whole  ?  But  for  the  answer  to 
this,  our  really  important  question,  we  may  now  be  pre- 
pared, if  we  next  lay  new  stress  upon  certain  aspects  of 
the  Fourth  Conception  of  Being,  to  which  we  have  made 
repeated  reference. 

Ill 

We  have  said  that  a  meaning  gets  wholeness  and  indi- 
viduality of  expression  precisely  in  so  far  as  it  gets,  at  the 
same  time,  conscious  determination.  An  imperfect  idea 
is  vague.  It  is  general.  But  it  is  so,  in  our  own  finite 
consciousness,  in  two  senses.  (1)  Any  finite  idea,  as  we 
have  seen,  sends  us  to  some  other  experience  to  furnish 
us  yet  further  instances  that  are  needed  for  its  whole 
expression.  This  reference  to  another  for  the  remainder 
of  itself  is  characteristic  of  even  the  clearest  and  most 
precise  of  our  finite  ideas,  just  in  so  far  as  they  are  gen- 


INDIVIDUALITY   AND   FREEDOM  447 

eral.  Thus,  in  counting,  the  single  numbers  refer  us, 
further  on  in  the  number-series,  for  the  rest  of  what  the 
counting  process  implies.  If  one  merely  counts  the  first 
ten  numbers,  there  are  still  other  numbers  to  count.  A 
complete  consciousness  of  the  whole  meaning  of  the  num- 
ber-series would  complete  this  process  of  seeking  Another 
by  presenting  the  whole  individual  meaning  of  the  num- 
ber concept  in  a  finished  form.  We  have,  so  far,  alto- 
gether postponed  the  discussion  of  those  difficulties  about 
the  quantitative  Infinite  which  the  conception  of  a  com- 
pleted knowledge  of  numbers  seems  to  involve.1  We 
have  asserted  only  that  the  arithmetical  or  mathemati- 
cal Being  of  the  number-series  cannot  be  consistently 
expressed,  either  in  realistic  form  or  in  the  form  of  mere 
valid  possibilities  of  experience.  We  have  consequently 
asserted  that  even  the  realm  of  mathematical  Being 
involves  facts  which  only  our  Fourth  Conception  can 
adequately  express.  In  what  way  the  whole  experience 
in  question  gets  realized,  we  have  pointed  out  only  in  the 
general  fashion  indicated  in  the  foregoing  lecture.  The 
whole  Being  in  question,  as  we  have  said,  must  be  present 
to  the  final  consciousness  in  its  complete  form,  or  in  such 
wise  that  no  other,  beyond,  remains  to  be  sought.  So 
much,  then,  for  the  first  inadequacy  of  our  finite  general 
ideas. 

(2)  But  our  finite  passing  consciousness  is  incomplete 
or  inadequate  to  its  own  purposes  not  merely  by  lack 
of  contents  adequate  to  express  its  wholeness,  but  by 
reason  of  vagueness  with  regard  to  its  own  momenta- 
rily conscious  purposes.  The  principal  source  of  actual 
1  See  the  Supplementary  Essay  to  the  present  volume. 


448     THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

error,  in  finite  consciousness,  we  have  already  found  to 
be  the  indetermination  of  our  purposes  at  any  stage  in 
their  realization.  Now  the  presupposition  of  our  whole 
view  is  that  the  final  expression  of  purpose  is  not 
merely  complete  as  to  its  contents,  but  absolutely  deter- 
minate as  to  what  meaning  these  contents  fulfil.  Now 
the  finite  process,  whereby  our  own  consciousness  passes 
from  an  indeterminate  to  a  relatively  determinate  state 
of  purpose,  of  intention,  of  seeking  for  contents,  is 
known  to  us  in  its  psychological  manifestations  as  a 
process  of  Selective  Attention,  growing  more  and  more 
definite  as  it  proceeds.  Precisely  in  so  far  as  we  are 
conscious  of  a  definite  meaning  at  any  instant,  we  are 
conscious  of  contents  selected,  as  it  were,  from  the  back- 
ground of  our  own  finite  consciousness,  selected  as  the 
contents  which  are  such  that  no  other  contents  would 
definitely  tend  to  express  our  will.  Now  it  is  the  law 
of  conscious  growth  in  ourselves,  that  greater  determi- 
nation of  purpose,  and  greater  wealth  of  presented  con- 
tents, are  the  correlative  aspects  of  any  gradual  fulfilment 
of  meaning.  The  more  we  know  and  the  more  richly 
we  find  our  will  fulfilled,  the  more  exclusive  and  deter- 
minate becomes  our  purpose.  The  vague  purpose  is  so 
far  not  at  the  instant  clear  as  to  whether  this  or  that 
would  better  fulfil  its  meaning.  The  precise  purpose 
selects  this  instead  of  that.  Precise  decision  is  exclu- 
sive as  well  as  inclusive.  And  when  I  speak  of  this 
fact,  I  refer  once  more  directly  to  our  consciousness  as 
my  warrant.  I  presuppose  nothing  as  to  the  causal 
basis,  or  as  to  the  psychological  or  physical  origin,  of 
attention.  I  say  that  one  who  rationally  finds  a  mean- 


INDIVIDUALITY   AND   FREEDOM  449 

ing  fulfilled,  discovers  at  once  a  wealth  of  contents,  and 
a  very  sharply  specific  exclusiveness  of  interest  fulfilled 
by  these  contents. 

A  satisfied  will,  a  fully  expressed  meaning,  would 
involve,  then,  the  twofold  consciousness  that  we  may 
express  by  the  two  phrases,  (1)  I  have  all  that  I  seek, 
and  need  no  other ;  (2)  I  need  precisely  these  contents, 
and  so  select  them  as  to  permit  no  other  to  take  here 
and  for  this  purpose  their  place.  As  a  matter  of  fact, 
then,  a  will  satisfied,  a  precisely  determinate  meaning 
expressed  in  facts,  is  as  selective  and  exclusive  on  the 
one  hand,  as,  on  the  other  hand,  it  is  possessed  of  an 
exhaustive  wealth  of  contents  which  meet  its  selection. 

Now  it  is  this  selective  character  of  every  rational 
conscious  process,  a  character  as  manifest  to  conscious- 
ness as  it  is  ultimately  significant  for  the  constitution  of 
all  Being,  —  it  is  this  character,  I  say,  which  to  my  mind 
is  responsible  above  all  for  the  Individuality  which  we 
have  already  characterized  as  belonging  to  the  whole  of 
Being,  and  which  we  shall  now  find  as  equally  charac- 
istic  of  every  region  of  finite  Being.  Strange  as  it  may 
at  first  seem,  a  closer  examination  of  the  nature  of  truth 
makes  easily  manifest  that  what  is,  quite  apart  from  any 
causal  theory,  must  be  viewed  by  the  consciousness  that 
faces  Being  as  a  selection  from  abstractly  possible  con- 
tents. The  nature  of  these  contents  in  general  is  recog- 
nized, and  is  so  far  present,  at  the  very  moment  when  the 
realization  of  this  nature  in  the  single  shape  selected 
from  amongst  all  possible  shapes  is,  at  the  same  time, 
experienced. 

This  general  view,  that  what  is,  is  a  selection  from 
2a 


450     THE   FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

possibilities,  is  in  another  form  as  characteristic  of  Real- 
ism, and  even  in  a  sense  of  Mysticism,  as  it  is  of  our  own 
view  of  Being. 

The  discovery  that  the  affirmation  of  reality  is  logically 
based  upon  the  exclusion  of  the  barely  possible,  is  con- 
stantly made  by  common  sense,  is  constantly  illustrated 
by  daily  experience,  and  is  popularly  exemplified  by  that 
well-known  destruction  of  possibilities  which  character- 
izes the  passing  of  youth,  the  course  of  history,  the  re- 
production of  every  species  through  relatively  chance 
union  of  the  members  of  that  species,  and  by  countless 
other  instances.  The  Darwinian  theory  of  the  genesis 
of  species  by  natural  selection,  is  only  a  single  instance 
of  the  application  of  this  general  concept  that  the  real  is 
a  selection  from  amongst  possibilities. 

In  elementary  logic,  as  we  earlier  showed,  it  becomes 
manifest  that  all  universal  judgments  are  at  once,  as  they 
say,  negatively  existential,  and  involve  a  destruction  of 
logically  possible  classes  of  objects.  Thus,  let  there  be 
what  the  logicians  call  an  Universe  of  Discourse,  that  is, 
a  world  of  possible  beings  of  which  you  are  discoursing. 
Into  that  world  let  two  classes  of  objects,  A  and  B,  be 
introduced.  Then  in  your  universe  of  discourse  it  be- 
comes logically  possible  that  there  should  be  four  sub- 
classes of  beings,  namely,  the  things  which  are  both  A 
and  B,  the  things  which  are  A  but  not  B,  the  things 
which  are  not  A  but  which  are  B,  and  finally  the  things 
which  are  neither  A  nor  B.  Thus,  for  example,  if  your 
universe  of  discourse  is  to  contain  righteous  men  and 
happy  men,  there  are  possible  the  four  sub-classes  of 
men  who  are  righteous  and  happy,  who  are  righteous 


INDIVIDUALITY  AND  FREEDOM  451 

and  unhappy,  who  are  unrighteous  but  happy,  and  who 
are  neither  righteous  nor  happy.  Now  begin  to  make 
universal  assertions  about  the  relations  amongst  these 
classes.  Assert  that  all  the  righteous  are  happy.  At 
once,  as  we  saw  in  our  seventh  lecture,  this  assertion 
appears  as  a  negative  existential  assertion,  and  as  the 
destruction  of  a  possibility.  For  you  can  express  it  by  say- 
ing that  in  your  universe  the  sub-class,  otherwise  possible, 
of  righteous  men  who  are  unhappy,  has  vanished  from 
existence.  Your  universe  has  now  reduced  its  realized 
possibilities  to  the  existence  of  three  sub-classes.  The 
example  is  trivial.  It  is  but  one  of  a  countless  number. 
To  know  facts  is  to  destroy  mere  possibilities.  To  know 
that  there  is  even  a  single  righteous  man  in  your  uni- 
verse of  discourse,  is  to  destroy  so  far  the  abstractly  pos- 
sible alternative  that  that  individual  man  is  unrighteous. 
This  result  so  far  holds  with  absolute  generality,  and 
without  regard  to  your  special  definition  of  the  concept 
of  Being.  Accordingly  every  realist  regards  the  real  as 
the  selection  from  the  possible.  And  in  this  we  too 
agree  with  him. 

Spinoza,  in  his  curious  compromise  between  realistic 
and  mystical  motives,  undertook  indeed  to  deny  this 
selective  function  of  reality ;  and  asserted  that  from  the 
divine  point  of  view  all  that  is  possible  is  real.  In  vain, 
however,  would  one  attempt  to  carry  out  this  doctrine, 
except  by  expressly  substituting  for  all  other  concep- 
tions of  being  the  Third  Conception,  viz.,  that  of  the  real 
as  the  valid.  But  even  this  conception  itself  is  obliged 
to  distinguish  between  the  relatively  determinate  genu- 
ine possibilities  of  experience,  and  the  absolutely  unre- 


452     THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

stricted  products  of  any  passing  fancy.  For  one  who 
developes  even  his  most  general  ideas  so  that  they  have 
any  relative  wholeness  of  meaning,  some  possibilities 
seem  to  be  at  once  excluded.  Thus  we  already  saw  that 
in  the  mathematician's  realm  numerous  abstract  possibil- 
ities are  excluded  whenever  a  specific  theorem  is  demon- 
strated. Our  rejection,  however,  of  the  Third  Conception 
of  Being  as  inadequate  was  due  in  the  end  to  a  recogni- 
tion of  the  fact  that,  so  long  as  you  define  mere  universals, 
mere  general  natures  of  things,  you  define  neither  the 
Being  of  objects  nor  the  truth  of  ideas. 

But  now,  as  a  fact,  our  whole  experience  with  the  con- 
cept of  Being  has  shown  us  that  this  exclusion  of  bare 
or  abstract  possibilities  by  the  presence  of  determinate 
facts  does  not  tend  to  impoverish,  but  rather  to  enrich, 
our  consciousness  of  what  is  real ;  for  it  is  by  exclusion 
of  vain  possibilities  that  we  become  able  at  once  to  define 
a  conscious  purpose  and  to  get  it  fulfilled  in  a  pre- 
cise way.  The  life  in  which  anything  whatever  can 
consistently  happen,  and  in  which  any  purpose  can  be 
fulfilled  in  any  way,  has  in  so  far  no  character  as  a  life. 
So  far  the  experience  of  such  a  life  is  the  experience  of 
nothing  in  particular,  —  of  no  meaning.  It  is  indeed  true 
that  an  object  which  we  regard  as  possible  in  the  sense 
that  it  is  still  lacking,  but  is  needed  for  a  specific  pur- 
pose, is  precisely  the  object  which  our  finite  experience 
seeks,  longs  to  possess,  regards  as  beyond  itself,  calls 
therefore  the  desired  Other.  The  absence  of  such  an 
object  is  indeed  a  lack,  a  relative  defeat  of  the  finite 
purpose.  And  from  our  own  point  of  view,  the  Fourth 
Conception  of  Being  does  indeed  involve  the  thesis  that 


INDIVIDUALITY   AND  FREEDOM  453 

there  are  no  valid  possibilities  which  are  to  remain  in  the 
end,  and  for  God,  merely  possible  and  unfulfilled  in  this 
sense,  namely  in  the  sense  that  while  they  are  needed  for 
a  specific  purpose,  they  are  still  regarded  as  absent  or  as 
non-existent.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  we  have  also  found 
that  what  a  given  finite  purpose  desires  includes  its  own 
specific  definition,  as  this  one  purpose  rather  than  another, 
as  this  specific  way  of  selecting  facts.  Now  the  more 
determinate  the  consciousness  of  such  a  purpose  becomes, 
the  more  does  such  consciousness  involve  a  selection  of 
some  facts  rather  than  others,  or  an  exclusion  from  Being 
of  what  is  now  regarded  as  merely  and  vainly  or  abstractly 
possible. 

If  you  ask  what  manner  of  partial  Being,  from  the 
point  of  view  of  our  Fourth  Conception,  such  abstractly 
conceived  but  concretely  excluded  facts  possess,  I  an- 
swer, precisely  the  fragmentary  sort  of  Being  which 
the  consciousness  of  a  specific  purpose,  that  is  the  con- 
sciousness of  a  particular  attentive  selection,  consciously 
assigns  to  them.  They  are  known  as  the  excluded  facts. 
They  are  defined  by  consciousness  only  in  relatively 
general  terms.  As  mere  kinds  of  experience,  the  facts 
which  attention  thus  excludes  are  themselves  part  of  the 
very  consciousness  which  forbids  them  to  have  any  richer 
and  more  concrete  Being  than  this  character  of  remain- 
ing mere  aspects  of  the  whole.  In  this  sense,  but  in  this 
only,  are  they  facts  whose  nature  is  experienced.  And 
once  more,  in  saying  this,  I  refer  to  consciousness  and  to 
nothing  else  as  my  warrant  for  the  meaning  that  I  intend 
to  convey.  When  one  attends,  when  one  chooses,  when 
one  finds  a  meaning  at  once  specific  and  fulfilled,  one 


454     THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

actually  observes,  as  an  aspect  of  one's  experience,  that 
which  one  defines  as  the  exclusion  of  a  generally  conceived 
possibility.  One's  experience  of  the  general  nature  of 
this  possibility  is  itself  a  part  of  the  contents  of  one's 
whole  present  consciousness.  The  realization  of  the 
whole  present  meaning  is  known  by  virtue  of  this  very 
consciousness  that  one  is  excluding  from  complete  expres- 
sion facts  whose  general  nature  one  still  experiences. 

Now  what  I  assert  is  that  our  Fourth  Conception  of 
Being,  in  conceiving  the  real  as  the  present  fulfilment  of 
meaning,  experienced  as  such  fulfilment  from  the  absolute 
point  of  view,  still  expressly  recognizes ,  that  every  such 
fulfilment  involves  conscious  selection  and  exclusion. 
The  facts  which  fulfil  the  meaning  are  at  once  such  that 
no  other  beyond  is  still  needed  to  supply  a  lack,  while, 
on  the  other  hand,  no  other  facts  could  take  their  place 
without  precisely  a  failure  to  fulfil  the  purpose.  And  in 
this  twofold  sense  is  the  world  of  the  fulfilled  meaning 
an  individual  world,  a  world  whose  place  no  other  could 
take.  A  consciousness  which  faced  a  collection  of  mere 
possibilities,  without  selection,  would  face  neither  whole- 
ness nor  determination  of  life.  The  very  perfection  of 
experience  involves  then,  as  an  element,  the  exclusion 
of  another,  whose  general  nature  is  indeed  a  part  of  the 
very  experience  in  question.  Just  as  formal  logic  and 
traditional  Realism  have  already  recognized  that  to  be 
real  involves  the  exclusion  of  bare  possibilities,  so  our 
own  conception  also  expressly  recognizes  that  the  life 
which  is,  in  its  wholeness,  is  exclusive  as  well  as  in- 
clusive ;  and  that  in  this  sense,  once  more,  the  realm 
of  Being  has  the  character  of  the  complete,  but  for 


INDIVIDUALITY  AND  FREEDOM  455 

this  very  reason  of  the  determinate,  Individual.  So  much 
then  for  Exclusion  and  Selection  as  aspects  of  will  both 
in  God  and  in  man.  We  next  pass  on  toward  more 
special  comparisons  between  Absolute  and  Finite  Individ- 
uality. For  Individuality,  as  we  now  begin  to  see,  is,  in 
one  aspect,  the  expression  of  Selective  Interest.  Yet  for 
a  moment  we  must  still  treat  of  Individuality  in  general. 

IV 

The  concept  of  the  logical  Individual,  viewed  apart  from 
the  question  as  to  the  distinctions  of  the  various  grades  of 
individuality,  finite  or  infinite,  is  a  problem  that  frequently 
has  received  far  too  indefinite  a  treatment  in  logical  dis- 
cussions. What  shall  the  word  "  individual "  in  general 
mean  ?  As  we  have  often  already  indicated,  the  technical 
answer  to  this  question  runs  :  By  an  individual  being, 
whatever  one's  metaphysical  doctrine,  one  means  an 
unique  being,  that  is,  a  being  which  is  alone  of  its  own 
type,  or  is  such  that  no  other  of  its  class  exists.  Now,  as 
we  saw  in  an  earlier  lecture,  our  human  knowledge  begins 
with  immediate  data,  and  with  vague  ideas.  But  mere 
colors  and  sounds,  as  such,  may  indeed  indicate  individual 
beings ;  but  they  are  not  yet  known  as  individuals  ;  while 
our  early  ideas,  in  their  twofold  vagueness,  both  as  ideas 
needing  further  determination  in  order  to  define  their 
purpose,  and  as  ideas  needing  further  embodiment  to  com- 
plete their  expression,  are  far  from  being  consciously 
adequate  ideas  of  individual  entities.  A  very  little  ex- 
amination of  our  popular  conceptions  shows  how  very 
general  all  such  conceptions  are.  A  very  little  study  of 
concrete  science  reveals  how  hard  it  is  for  any  man  to  get 


456     THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

a  clear  idea  of  what  his  science  regards  as  the  constitution 
of  any  of  its  individual  objects.  It  is  far  easier  to  know 
something  about  the  circulation  of  the  blood,  than  to  have 
any  adequate  knowledge  of  the  medical  aspects  of  the 
case  of  an  individual  man  whose  circulation  is  in  any  way 
deranged  by  disease.  It  is  precisely  the  individual  case 
that  constitutes  the  goal  of  the  physician's  knowledge. 
In  general  a  real  knowledge  of  individual  facts  is  the 
ideal  aim  of  science,  rather  than  the  beginning  of  any 
form  of  human  insight  ;  and  this  one  can  observe  to  be 
true,  quite  apart  from  any  metaphysical  conception  of 
what  constitutes  individuality. 

Yet  it  is  indeed  perfectly  true  that,  long  before  we  have 
any  scientific  approach  to  a  knowledge  of  the  individual 
facts  of  the  natural  world,  we  all  of  us  somehow  believe 
that  the  world  contains  individual  beings.  And  the  his- 
torical prominence  of  the  thesis  that  whatever  is,  is 
individual,  the  prominence,  I  say,  of  this  thesis  in  the 
metaphysics  of  all  ages,  is  due  to  deep  reasons  which  sel- 
dom come  to  the  clear  consciousness  of  those  who  are 
accustomed  to  talk  glibly  about  individuality.  Only  our 
Fourth  Conception  of  Being  is  able  to  make  the  conception 
at  once  rational  and  explicit.  It  is,  so  we  have  asserted, 
precisely  as  the  final  and  satisfactory  expression  of  the 
whole  will  of  an  idea  that  any  object  can  be  regarded  as 
unique.  But  what  makes  the  presupposition  that  objects 
are  individual  precisely  in  so  far  as  they  are  real  appear 
so  early  in  human  thought,  and  exercise  such  a  control- 
ling influence  over  the  development  of  science,  is  pre- 
cisely that  demand  of  the  finite  idea  for  wholeness  of 
expression,  which  we  have  just  analyzed  in  both  of  its 


INDIVIDUALITY   AND   FREEDOM  457 

contrasted  aspects.  Long  before  we  can  ever  say,  with 
even  a  shadow  of  plausibility,  that  we  ourselves  have 
known  and  experienced  the  unique  presence  of  any  single 
fact,  as  such,  our  restless  finite  will  itself  has  demanded 
that  the  real  world  wherein  our  will  seeks,  and  logically 
speaking,  ultimately  finds,  its  fulfilment,  shall  be  alto- 
gether determinate,  both  in  so  far  as  nothing  further  is 
needed  to  complete  it,  and  in  so  far  as  nothing  else  would 
meet  the  needs  which  constitute  finite  ideas. 

But  owing  to  our  finitude,  will,  in  our  own  case,  far 
anticipates  its  own  fulfilment.  The  individual,  therefore, 
as  a  conceived  object  of  inquiry,  of  desire,  and  of  knowl- 
edge, appears  in  our  finite  human  thought  as  something 
that  we  early  define  much  more  in  terms  of  selective  ex- 
clusion than  of  empirically  observed  completeness.  We 
presuppose  the  individual  in  both  the  foregoing  senses  ; 
viz.,  as  selected  and  as  complete.  But,  if  you  look  closely 
at  that  region  of  our  consciousness  where  first  we  come 
nearest  to  facing  what  we  take  to  be  an  experience  of 
individuality,  you  find,  I  think,  that  it  is  our  selective 
attention,  especially  as  embodied  in  what  one  may  call 
our  exclusive  affections,  which  first  brings  home  to  us 
what  we  mortals  require  an  individual  being  to  be. 
How  in  fact  should  a  finite  being,  whose  experience  con- 
stantly passes  from  one  partial  fulfilment  to  another,  from 
one  vague  general  idea  to  another  instance  of  the  same 
generality,  —  how  should  such  a  being,  I  say,  come  to  be 
so  sure  as  most  of  us  are  that  he  has  actually  stood  in  the 
presence  of  individuals,  and  has  faced  beings  that  are 
unique  ?  Yet  every  man  supposes,  to  take  perfectly  ordi- 
nary instances,  that  his  own  father  and  mother  are  real 


458 

individuals,  and  that  other  men,  too,  even  where  their  indi- 
viduality has  been  far  less  closely  scrutinized,  are  still  in 
themselves  somehow  individuals.  Every  man  also  early 
believes  that  the  world  as  a  whole,  whether  he  regards  it 
as  one  or  as  many,  is  at  all  events  an  individual  collection 
of  individuals.  Yet  to  make  this  assertion  is  in  any  case 
far  to  transcend  any  man's  actual  experience,  regarded 
merely  as  that  experience  comes  to  us.  For  what  we  find 
in  our  finite  wanderings  are  always  cases  of  types,  in- 
stances of  imperfectly  fulfilled  meanings.  In  observing 
my  father,  what  I  each  time  experience  must  necessarily 
be  merely  the  presence  to  my  mind  of  a  certain  kind  of 
experience.  That  the  object  of  this  experience  is  unique, 
that  in  all  the  universe  there  is  no  other  like  it,  how 
should  I  myself  ever  experience  this  fact  ?  That  this 
theorem  about  individuality  is  itself  true,  is  precisely 
what  our  Fourth  Conception  of  Being  has  now  asserted. 
For  whatever  the  relation  between  the  finite  idea  and  the 
whole  world  may  be,  this  we  already  know  from  our 
Fourth  Conception,  namely  that  the  world  in  its  unity 
is  an  individual  whole,  such  that  no  other  could  take  its 
place  as  an  expression  of  this  one  purpose. 

Our  idea  of  individuality  comes  to  our  finite  conscious- 
ness, therefore,  rather  on  the  selective  side  of  this  con- 
sciousness than  upon  the  side  of  its  present  fulfilment.  It 
is  not  so  much  what  I  already  know  about  an  individual 
as  what  my  affections  determine  to  regard  as  unique  in 
the  value  of  my  object,  that  first  brings  home  to  me,  in 
the  case  of  my  father  or  my  mother  or  my  home  or  my 
personal  possessions,  or  my  own  life,  and  later  only  in  the 
case  of  indifferent  beings,  the  uniqueness  of  the  object  in 


INDIVIDUALITY  AND  FREEDOM  459 

question.  Affection  first  says  in  presence  of  an  object, 
imperfectly  presented  in  experience,  not  only  that  there 
shall  be  further  experience  completing  and  fulfilling  this 
meaning,  but  also  that  there  shall  be  in  this  further 
experience  such  unity  as  constitutes  an  unique  object. 
Affection  first  declares  that  there  shall  be  no  other  object 
capable  of  fulfilling  this  meaning,  beyond  the  single  object 
whose  Being  I  now  presuppose.  It  is  thus,  for  instance, 
that  the  lover  says,  There  shall  be  none  like  my  beloved. 
It  is  thus,  too,  that  the  mother  says,  There  shall  be  no 
child  like  my  child.  It  is  thus  that  the  loyal  friend  says, 
There  shall  be  no  friend  like  my  friend.  It  is  thus  that 
the  finite  Self  says,  No  life  shall  have  precisely  the  mean- 
ing that  my  life  has.  It  is  thus  also  that  the  ethical  con- 
sciousness says,  My  duty  shall  be  that  which  nobody  but 
myself  can  conceivably  do.  In  brief,  in  our  finite  life,  the 
sense  of  the  determinate  selection  of  the  single  object 
that  we  shall  regard  as  the  fulfilment  of  our  meaning, 
comes  earlier  to  our  consciousness  than  any  specific  hope 
that,  in  our  finite  capacity,  we  shall  ever  live  to  see  this 
specific  meaning  wholly  fulfilled. 

Now  this  disposition  of  our  finite  will,  this  tendency  to 
a  selection  of  our  objects  as  unique,  is  precisely  the  char- 
acter which  our  Fourth  Conception  regards  as  also  belong- 
ing to  that  Absolute  Will  which  faces  the  final  meaning 
and  fulfilment  of  the  world.  For  the  world  as  a  whole  is, 
from  our  point  of  view,  an  individual  fact,  not  merely  by 
virtue  of  the  completeness  of  the  contents  of  the  Absolute 
Experience,  but  by  reason  of  the  definiteness  of  the  selec- 
tion of  that  object  which  shall  be  permitted  to  fulfil  the 
final  meaning.  No  significant  purpose,  no  element  of 


460     THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF   BEING 

meaning  that  finite  ideas  demand  as  necessary  for  their 
own  fulfilment,  could  indeed  be,  according  to  our  thesis, 
wholly  ignored  from  the  absolute  point  of  view.  But, 
on  the  other  hand,  the  very  perfection  of  the  fulfilment 
would  logically  require  of  the  divine  will  the  sort  of 
determination  of  purpose  of  which  we  too  are  conscious 
when  we  deal  with  the  objects  of  the  exclusive  affection. 
It  is  will,  then,  in  God  and  in  man,  that  logically  deter- 
mines the  consciousness  of  individuality.  The  individual 
is,  primarily,  the  object  and  expression  of  an  exclusive 
interest,  of  a  determinate  selection. 

From  this  point  of  view,  the  world  in  its  wholeness 
might  indeed  be  regarded  as,  so  to  speak,  an  only  begotten 
son  of  the  central  purpose,  —  an  unique  expression,  — 
unique  not  merely  by  reason  of  its  wealth,  but  of  its 
exclusiveness.  And  thus  the  category  of  individual- 
ity would  be  fulfilled  in  the  whole  precisely  in  the  sense 
in  which  our  finite  affection  presupposes  its  fulfilment  in 
individual  cases. 


We  have  thus  gradually  prepared  ourselves  to  define 
the  relation  between  the  Finite  and  the  Absolute  Will.  We 
have  studied  as  aspects  of  will,  both  selective  attention 
and  the  nature  of  individuality.  We  have  indicated,  too, 
the  sense  in  which,  for  our  Fourth  Conception,  the  world 
is  the  fulfilment  of  purpose.  And  now,  to  sum  up  so  far, 
we  do  not  say  that  any  purpose,  divine  or  human,  first 
existing  as  a  merely  separate  power,  thereupon  causes  its 
own  fulfilment.  On  the  contrary,  we  say  as  to  God,  that 
from  the  absolute  point  of  view,  the  genuine  knowledge  of 


INDIVIDUALITY  AND  FREEDOM  461 

the  absolute  purpose,  as  an  empirical  fact,  is  its  own 
fulfilment.  For,  according  to  our  central  thesis,  except 
as  consciously  fulfilling  a  purpose,  nothing  can,  logically 
speaking,  exist  at  all.  In  the  second  place  we  have  also 
maintained  that  the  fulfilment  of  the  divine  purpose  is 
twofold,  involving  at  once  wealth  of  experience  conform- 
ing to  the  one  meaning,  and  selection  both  of  the  facts 
which  express  the  meaning,  and  of  the  precise  and  indivi- 
dual determination  of  the  meaning  itself.  The  world  that 
thus  expresses  meaning  appears,  from  the  absolute  point 
of  view,  as  an  unique  whole,  but  as  also  an  unique  selected 
whole,  such  that  neither  for  the  whole  nor  for  any  of  the 
parts  could  any  other  fact  be  substituted,  without  failure 
in  the  realization  of  precisely  this  totality  of  determinate 
meaning.  And  consequently,  quite  apart  from  any  causal 
theory,  that  selective  aspect  which  common  sense  already 
regards  as  essential  to  the  will  does  indeed  appear  in  our 
account  as  a  real  and  logically  required  character  of  the 
divine  or  absolute  will.  In  the  third  place,  however,  we 
find  a  similarly  selective  character  belonging  to  our  own 
will,  and  an  experience  of  such  selection  we  find  in  that 
sort  of  exclusive  interest  whereby,  even  in  advance  of 
knowledge,  we  undertake  to  define  the  individuality  which 
we  presuppose  in  all  the  objects  of  our  more  exclusive 
affection. 

If  you  ask,  from  this  point  of  view,  in  what  sense  the 
world  is  to  be  called  rather  the  expression  of  the  Divine 
Will,  and  in  what  sense  it  is  rather  the  expression  of  the 
Divine  Knowledge,  I  reply  that  while  we  have  by  no 
means  separated  these  two  aspects  of  the  universe,  we  can 
now  easily  see  the  convenience  from  many  points  of  view 


462      THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

of  distinguishing  them.  The  Divine  or  Absolute  Know- 
ledge this  world  expresses,  by  virtue  of  the  unity  of  con- 
sciousness in  which  all  its  facts  are  linked,  and  by  virtue 
too  of  that  universality  of  meaning  which  joins  all  various 
ideas,  in  such  wise  that  every  finite  idea,  in  so  far  as  it 
merely  refers  to  another,  or  has  external  reference,  is 
general,  while  the  whole  expression  of  these  ideas  is 
unique  and  individual.  In  this  same  sense  we  can  also 
speak  of  the  world,  quite  accurately,  as  the  expression,  or 
embodiment,  or  fulfilment,  of  the  Divine  Thought.  Will, 
on  the  other  hand,  this  world  expresses,  not  as  if  the 
Divine  Will  were  an  external  power  causing  the  world, 
but  in  so  far  as  the  unity  of  the  whole  is  teleological,  is 
such  as  ideas  intend;  or  again,  in  so  far  as  the  world 
attains  wholeness,  and  needs  no  fact  beyond  it  for  its 
completion ;  and  finally,  in  so  far  as  this  wholeness  and 
uniqueness  of  the  world  is  the  expression  of  an  ideal  se- 
lection, whose  nature  is  well  exemplified  by  our  own 
exclusive  interests,  and  whose  type  of  fulfilment  we  all 
observe  whenever  we  win  a  rational  ideal  goal. 

Now  all  these  considerations  might  seem  once  more  to 
deprive  any  finite  portion,  or  aspect,  of  this  conscious 
universe,  of  any  distinguishable  private  significance.  On 
the  contrary,  however,  precisely  the  opposite  is  the  true 
result.  For  consider.  If  the  whole  world  is  at  once  the 
complete  expression  of  a  plan,  and  also  the  unique  ex- 
pression of  such  plan,  then  every  fact  in  it,  precisely  in 
so  far  as  we  distinguish  that  fact  from  other  facts,  and 
consider  its  internal  meaning,  is  also  inevitably  unique, 
sharing  in  so  far  the  uniqueness  of  the  whole.  For,  to 
illustrate,  if  in  the  ordinary  empirical  world  of  space,  this 


INDIVIDUALITY  AND  FREEDOM  463 

room  is  unique,  so  that  by  hypothesis  there  shall  be  no 
other  room  like  it  in  the  world,  then  any  definable  part  of 
the  unique  room,  by  virtue  of  the  very  fact  that  it  is  dif- 
ferent from  all  the  other  parts  of  this  same  room,  has  its 
own  unique  individuality  as  opposed  to  any  other  fact  in 
the  universe. 

Or  again,  let  A  be  any  fact.  First  suppose  A  to  be 
merely  an  abstract  universal,  a  general  type.  Then  sup- 
pose A  to  be  an  individual.  If  A  is  as  a  whole  merely 
a  case  of  a  type,  so  that  there  are  other  cases  like  it,  then 
any  part  of  A  is  in  so  far  also  only  a  case  of  a  type,  and 
is  not  unique.  But  if  A  is  an  individual,  unique  and 
elsewhere  unexampled,  then  every  fragment  of  A  has  its 
part  in  the  individuality  of  the  whole,  just  as  a  play  of 
Shakespeare,  as  this  particular  expression  of  the  indivi- 
duality of  the  poet,  has  its  own  uniqueness  by  sharing  in 
his. 

Now,  by  hypothesis,  the  world  exists  only  as  such  an 
expression  of  the  meaning  of  the  divine  system  of  ideas, 
that  no  other  life  than  this  of  the  present  world  could 
express  precisely  this  system.  But  suppose  that  you  lay 
stress  upon  the  facts  of  any  finite  life.  You  have  a  right 
to  do  s'o,  for  these  facts  exist  for  the  Absolute  precisely 
as  much  as  for  you.  Then  you  have,  in  the  first  place, 
facts  that  exist  only  as  an  expression  of  a  meaning.  If 
you  ask  of  what  meaning  they  are  the  expression,  the 
answer  is,  of  the  meaning  of  the  very  ideas  and  of  the 
very  will,  that,  in  the  finite  consciousness,  accompany  these 
very  facts. 

Take,  for  instance,  one  of  your  own  acts.  In  part,  it 
expresses  one  of  your  own  purposes.  Now  our  theory 


464     THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

does  indeed  unite  both  your  act  and  the  idea  that  your 
act  expresses,  along  with  all  other  acts  and  ideas,  in  the 
single  unity  of  the  absolute  consciousness.  But  this 
single  unity  of  the  absolute  consciousness,  as  we  already 
saw  at  the  last  time,  is  nothing  that  merely  absorbs  your 
individuality,  in  such  wise  that  you  vanish  from  amongst 
the  facts  of  the  world.  You  remain  from  the  absolute 
point  of  view  precisely  what  you  now  know  yourself  to 
be,  namely,  the  possessor  of  just  this  ideal  purpose,  whose 
internal  meaning  is  embodied  in  just  so  much  of  conscious 
life  as  is  yours.  Our  very  theory  insists  that  your  inter- 
nal meanings,  your  ideas  viewed  as  internally  significant, 
your  selections  and  expressions,  are  typical  instances  of 
facts,  and  of  precisely  the  facts  of  whose  unity  the 
world  consists.  Now  if  the  whole  world  is,  as  whole, 
the  unique  expression  of  the  divine  purpose,  it  follows 
that  every  finite  purpose,  precisely  in  so  far  as  it  is,  is 
a  partial  expression  and  attainment  of  the  divine  will ; 
and  also  that  every  finite  fulfilment  of  purpose,  precisely 
as  we  finite  beings  find  it,  is  a  partial  fulfilment  of  the 
divine  meaning.  For  from  our  point  of  view,  while  all 
finite  ideas,  in  so  far  as  concerns  their  external  meaning, 
are  indeed  general,  still  no  fact  exists  merely  as  a  case 
of  a  type,  or  merely  as  an  instance  of  an  universal.  The 
very  simplest  view  of  any  finite  fact  already  makes  it  a 
positive  part  of  the  unique  divine  experience,  and  there- 
fore, as  this  part,  itself  unique.  A  still  deeper  view 
recognizes  any  finite  will,  say  your  own  present  will,  as  a 
stage  or  case  of  the  expression  of  the  divine  purpose  at 
a  given  point  of  time ;  but  this  expression,  too,  is  once 
more  unique.  And  this  expression  is  also  in  one  aspect 


INDIVIDUALITY  AND  FREEDOM  465 

no  other  than  what  you  find  it  to  be,  to  wit,  your  own 
conscious  will  and  meaning. 

Thus  the  individuality  of  the  whole  in  such  wise 
dwells  in  the  parts,  the  individuality  of  the  unique 
divine  purpose  is  in  such  wise  present  in  each  finite 
purpose,  that  no  finite  purpose,  viewed  merely  as  an 
internal  meaning,  could  have  its  place  taken  by  another 
without  a  genuine  alteration  of  the  whole ;  while,  on 
the  other  hand,  it  is  equally  true  that  the  whole  would 
not  be  what  it  is  were  not  precisely  this  finite  purpose 
left  in  its  own  uniqueness  to  speak  precisely  its  own 
word  —  a  word  which  no  other  purpose  can  speak  in  the 
language  of  the  divine  will.  In  brief,  then,  our  view 
leaves  all  the  unique  meaning  of  your  finite  individual 
life  just  as  rich  as  you  find  it  to  be.  You  are  in  God ; 
but  you  are  not  lost  in  God.  If  every  finite  pulsation  of 
life,  despite  its  aspect  of  mere  generality,  its  external 
meaning,  has  something  unique  about  it,  and  if  this 
unique  aspect  of  the  finite  life  expresses  an  internal 
meaning,  then  the  meaning  of  every  such  fact  itself  is 
unique.  Or  to  apply  the  matter  once  more  to  yourself  : 
if  every  instance  of  your  life  expresses  a  will  that  is  to  be 
found  expressed  in  precisely  this  way  nowhere  else  in  all 
the  world,  and  if  this  will  is  the  will  of  which  you  are 
now  conscious,  then  we  can  say  that  the  verdict  of  your 
own  consciousness  when  it  regards  your  life  as  the  expres- 
sion of  your  individual  will  is  in  no  wise  refuted,  but  is 
only  confirmed  by  our  Fourth  Conception  of  Being. 

Thus  it  is  then  that  we  deal,  in  case  of  the  finite  will 
and  the  divine  will,  with  the  problem  of  the  One  and  the 
Many.  A  realistic  union  of  the  many  different  beings  in 

2H 


466     THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

one  being  we  long  since  found  to  be  impossible.  For  our 
present  point  of  view,  however,  the  realistic  difficulty  of 
the  Many  and  the  One  has  been  wholly  set  aside.  It  is 
not  indeed  for  us  a  question  of  how  the  many  things 
could  become  one  thing.  For  us  the  unity  of  the  world 
is  the  unity  of  consciousness.  The  variety  of  the  world 
is  the  internal,  but  none  the  less  wealthy  and  genuine, 
variety  of  the  purposes  and  embodiments  of  purpose  pres- 
ent within  this  unity  of  the  one  divine  consciousness. 
Now  with  regard  to  the  ultimate  unity  and  consequent 
harmony  of  all  this  variety,  our  Fourth  Conception  has 
given  us  indeed  a  general  formula.  The  Many  must, 
despite  their  variety,  win  harmony  and  perfection  by  their 
cooperation.  But  this  principle,  so  far,  gives  us  no  limit 
either  to  the  empirical  variety  of  will,  or  of  interest  and 
of  experience  in  the  absolute,  nor  any  limit  to  the  rela- 
tive independence  which  the  uniqueness  of  the  individual 
elements  makes  possible.  What  we  see,  however,  is  that 
every  distinguishable  portion  of  the  divine  life,  in  addi- 
tion to  all  the  universal  ties  which  link  it  to  the  whole, 
expresses  its  own  meaning.  We  see,  too,  that  this  mean- 
ing is  unique,  and  that  this  meaning  is  precisely  identical 
with  what  each  one  of  us  means  by  his  own  individual 
will,  so  far  as  that  will  is  at  any  time  determinate,  uniquely 
selected,  and  empirically  expressed.  So  much  then  for 
the  general  relations  of  Absolute  and  of  Finite  will. 

VI 

Two  expressions,  familiar  to  common  sense  in  speak- 
ing of  finite  will,  receive  herewith  their  sufficient  and,  I 
believe,  their  only  possible  justification.  Common  sense 


INDIVIDUALITY  AND  FREEDOM  467 

first  asserts  that,  when  my  will  gets  expressed,  I  individu- 
ally am  active.  Common  sense  also,  in  the  second  place, 
asserts  that  when  my  will  gets  inwardly  expressed  in  my 
choice,  I  individually  am  free.  Now  into  the  endless  dis- 
cussions as  to  the  causal  relations  of  this  or  that  aspect 
of  the  human  will  we  have  declined  in  this  discussion  to 
go.  We  have  declined,  because  we  have  said  that  all 
causation,  whatever  it  is,  is  but  a  special  instance  of 
Being,  and  never  can  explain  any  of  the  ultimate  prob- 
lems about  Being.  But  when  we  have  asserted,  as  we 
have  now  done,  that  every  moment  of  every  finite  con- 
sciousness has  some  unique  character,  and  when  we  have 
asserted,  as  we  have  also  done,  that  in  our  rational  life 
our  momentary  will  and  its  finite  expression  belong  to 
this  very  unique  aspect  of  our  finite  life,  we  have  indeed 
found,  in  our  finite  will,  an  aspect  which  no  causation 
could  ever  by  any  possibility  explain.  For  whatever  else 
causation  may  be,  it  implies  the  explanation  of  facts  by 
their  general  character,  and  by  their  connections  with 
other  facts.  Whatever  is  unique,  is  as  such  not  causally 
explicable.  The  individual  as  such  is  never  the  mere 
result  of  law.  In  consequence,  the  causal  explanation  of 
an  object  never  defines  its  individual  and  unique  charac- 
ters as  such,  but  always  its  general  characters.  Conse- 
quently, if  the  will  and  the  expression  of  that  will  in  any 
moment  of  our  finite  life  possess  characters,  namely,  pre- 
cisely these  individual  and  uniquely'  significant  characters 
which  no  causal  explanation  can  predetermine,  then  such 
acts  of  will,  as  significant  expressions  of  purpose  in  our 
life,  constitute  precisely  what  ethical  common  sense  has 
always  meant  by  free  acts.  If  your  finite  purpose  is  now 


468     THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

different  from  that  of  any  other  finite  being,  and  if  your 
finite  purpose  now  in  any  sense  uniquely  expresses,  how- 
ever inadequately,  its  own  determinate  meaning,  in  its 
own  way,  then,  you  can  indeed  assert :  I  alone,  amongst 
all  the  different  beings  of  the  universe,  will  this  act. 
That  it  is  true  that  God  here  also  wills  in  me,  is 
indeed  the  unquestionable  result  of  the  unity  of  the 
divine  consciousness.  But  it  is  equally  true  that  this 
divine  unity  is  here  and  now  realized  by  me,  and  by  me 
only,  through  my  unique  act.  My  act,  too,  is  a  part  of 
the  divine  life  that,  however  fragmentary,  is  not  else- 
where repeated  in  the  divine  consciousness.  When  I 
thus  consciously  and  uniquely  will,  it  is  I  then  who  just 
here  am  God's  will,  or  who  just  here  consciously  act  for 
the  whole.  I  then  am  so  far  free. 

The  other  popular  conception,  in  addition  to  the  con- 
ception of  freedom,  which  belongs  in  this  connection,  is 
that  very  conception  of  Activity  which  I  have  just  em- 
ployed. By  the  term  "  activity "  I  regard  our  ethical  com- 
mon sense  as  meaning  precisely  the  very  fact  that  our 
present  will,  as  the  will  of  an  individual,  is  unique.  By 
our  activity,  then,  I  mean  just  the  unique  significance  of 
the  present  expression  of  our  will.  If  a  general  law,  — 
a  merely  universal  type, — if  our  characters  or  tempera- 
ments, or  some  other  such  universal  nature  of  things,  are 
expressed  in  our  present  experience,  then,  in  so  far,  we 
are  indeed  mere  cases  of  types.  In  so  far  we  do  not  act. 
But  if  this  my  present  expression  of  my  meaning  is  in 
such  wise  unique  that,  but  for  this  meaning,  this  expres- 
sion would  have  no  place  in  the  whole  realm  of  Being, 
then  indeed  I  may  call  my  present  expression  of  meaning 


INDIVIDUALITY  AND  FREEDOM  469 

my  act.  As  my  act  this  my  present  will  is  as  unique  as 
is  the  whole  divine  life,  as  free  as  is  the  whole  meaning 
of  which  the  whole  world  is  an  expression.  Not  by  vir- 
tue then  of  any  supposed  causal  efficacy  is  the  divine  will 
as  a  power  the  producer  of  the  world.  And  just  so,  not 
by  virtue  of  its  potency  as  a  physical  agent  is  our  human 
action  a  free  cause. 

To  our  later  series  of  lectures  must  be  altogether  left 
the  discussion  of  any  sort  of  causation  in  its  real,  but 
in  its  extremely  subordinate,  place  in  the  constitution 
of  reality.  But  what  we  at  present  say  to  the  finite 
being  is :  You  are  at  once  an  expression  of  the  divine 
will,  and  by  virtue  of  that  very  fact  the  expression  here 
and  now,  in  your  life,  of  your  own  will,  precisely  in  so 
far  as  you  find  yourself  acting  with  a  definite  intent, 
and  gaining  through  your  act  a  definite  empirical  expres- 
sion. We  do  not  say,  Your  individuality  causes  your  act. 
We  do  not  say,  Your  free  will  creates  your  life.  For 
Being  is  everywhere  deeper  than  causation.  What  you 
are  is  deeper  than  your  mere  power  as  a  physical  agent. 
Nothing  whatever  besides  yourself  determines  either 
causally  or  otherwise  just  what  constitutes  your  indi- 
viduality, for  you  are  just  this  unique  and  elsewhere 
unexampled  expression  of  the  divine  meaning.  And 
here  and  now  your  individuality  in  your  act  is  your 
freedom.  This  your  freedom  is  your  unique  possession. 
Nowhere  else  in  the  universe  is  there  what  here  expresses 
itself  in  your  conscious  being.  And  this  is  true  of  you, 
not  in  spite  of  the  unity  of  the  divine  consciousness,  but 
just  because  of  the  very  uniqueness  of  the  whole  divine 
life.  For  all  is  divine,  all  expresses  meaning.  All 


470     THE  FOUR  HISTORICAL  CONCEPTIONS  OF  BEING 

meaning  is  uniquely  expressed.  Nothing  is  vainly  re- 
peated; you  too,  then,  as  individual  are  unique.  And 
(here  is  the  central  fact)  just  in  so  far  as  you  consciously 
will  and  choose,  you  then  and  there  in  so  far  know  what 
this  unique  meaning  of  yours  is.  Therefore  are  you  in 
action  Free  and  Individual,  just  because  the  unity  of  the 
divine  life,  when  taken  together  with  the  uniqueness  of 
this  life,  implies  in  every  finite  being  just  such  essential 
originality  of  meaning  as  that  of  which  you  are  con- 
scious. Arise  then,  freeman,  stand  forth  in  thy  world. 
It  is  God's  world.  It  is  also  thine. 


SUPPLEMENTAKY   ESSAY 


GIFFORD   LECTURES 


FIRST  SERIES 

i 

SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY 
THE  ONE,    THE  MANY,  AND   THE  INFINITE 

SECTION  I.     MB.  BRADLEY'S  PROBLEM 

THE  closing  lecture  of  the  foregoing  series  has  begun  the 
statement  of  the  doctrine  of  the  Individual.  The  reality  of 
Many  within  One,  and  the  necessity  of  the  union  of  the  One 
and  the  Many,  have  been  maintained,  side  by  side  with  some 
account  of  the  nature  that,  as  I  also  maintain,  ought  to  be 
attributed  to  the  Individual,  whether  you  consider  the  Abso- 
lute Individual,  or  the  Individuals  of  our  finite  world,  —  the 
men  whose  wills  are  expressed  in  our  life.  Now  I  should  be 
glad  to  allow  the  general  theory  to  stand,  for  the  present, 
simply  as  stated;  and  to  postpone  altogether,  until  the  second 
series  of  these  lectures,  the  further  defence  of  the  doctrine,  — 
were  it  not  that  the  most  thorough,  and  in  very  many  respects 
by  far  the  most  important  contribution  to  pure  Metaphysics 
which  has  of  late  years  appeared  in  England,  has  made  known 
a  Theory  of  Being  with  which,  in  some  of  its  most  significant 
theses,  I  heartily  agree,  while,  nevertheless,  this  very  Theory 
of  Being,  as  it  has  been  stated  by  its  author,  undertakes  to 
render  wholly  impossible,  for  our  human  minds,  as  now  we 
are  constituted,  any  explicit  and  detailed  reconciliation  of  the 
One  and  the  Many,  or  any  positive  theory  of  how  Individuals 
find  their  real  place  in  the  Absolute.  Defining  and  defending 
a  conception  of  the  Absolute  as  "  one  system, "  whose  contents 
are  "experience,"  Mr.  Bradley,  to  whose  well-known  book, 

473 


474  SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY 

Appearance  and  Reality,  I  am  here  referring,  has,  neverthe- 
less, maintained  that  we  are  wholly  unable  to  "  construe  "  to 
ourselves  the  way  in  which  the  realm  of  Appearance  finds 
its  unity  in  the  Absolute.  He  rejects,  in  consequence,  every 
more  detailed  effort  to  interpret  our  own  life  in  its  relations  to 
the  Absolute,  such  as,  in  the  foregoing  discussions  I  have  begun, 
and,  in  the  second  series  of  these  lectures,  hope  to  continue. 
The  reason  for  this  rejection,  in  Mr.  Bradley's  case,  is  of  the 
most  fundamental  kind.  It  is  founded  upon  the  most  central 
theses  of  his  Theory  of  Being.  The  proper  place  to  discuss  it 
is  in  close  connection,  therefore,  with  the  general  theory  in 
question.  I  have  stated  my  own  case;  but  I  feel  obliged  to 
try  to  do  justice  to  Mr.  Bradley's  interpretation.  For  if  he  is 
right,  there  is  little  hope  for  our  further  undertaking. 

The  task  is  no  easy  one.  I  myself  owe  a  great  debt  to  Mr. 
Bradley's  book,  a  debt  manifest  in  my  criticism  of  Realism  in 
Lecture  III,  and  in  many  other  parts  of  my  discussion.  The 
book  is  itself  a  very  elaborate  argumentative  structure.  One 
ought  not  to  make  light  of  it  by  chance  quotations.  One  can- 
not easily  summarize  its  well-wrought  reasonings  in  a  few 
sentences.  To  discuss  it  carefully  would  have  been  wholly 
impossible  in  my  general  course  of  lectures.  On  the  other 
hand,  to  sunder  the  discussion  of  it  wholly  from  the  present 
discourse,  would  have  made  such  a  critical  enterprise  as  here 
follows,  seem,  for  me,  a  thankless  polemical  task.  For  lengthy 
polemic  regarding  so  serious  a  piece  of  work  as  Mr.  Bradley's 
is  hardly  to  be  tolerated  apart  from  an  attempt  at  construction. 
And  so  I  have  resolved  to  attempt  the  task  in  the  form  of  an 
essay,  supplementary  to  my  own  statement  of  a  Theory  of 
Being  in  these  lectures,  and  preparatory  to  the  discussion  of 
Man  and  Nature  in  the  next  series. 

Even  here,  however,  I  must  attempt  to  construct  as  well  as 
to  object.  And  the  effort  will  lead  at  once  to  problems  which 
I  had  no  time  to  discuss  in  the  general  lectures.  Mr.  Bradley, 
for  instance,  has  shown  that  every  effort  to  bring  to  unity  the 
manifoldness  of  our  world  involves  us  in  what  he  himself  often 
calls  an  "infinite  process."  In  other  words,  if,  in  telling 


SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY  475 

about  the  Absolute  you  try  to  show  how  the  One  and  the  Many 
are  brought  into  unity,  and  how  the  Many  develope  out  of  the 
One,  you  find  that,  in  attempting  to  define  the  Many  at  all, 
you  have  defined  an  actually  infinite  number.  But  an  actually 
infinite  multitude,  according  to  Mr.  Bradley,  is  a  self-contra- 
dictory conception.  The  problem  thus  stated  is  an  ancient 
phase  of  the  general  problem  as  to  unity  and  plurality. 

From  the  very  outset  of  the  philosophical  study  of  the  diver- 
sities of  the  universe,  it  has  been  noticed,  that  in  many  cases, 
where  common  sense  is  content  to  enumerate  two,  or  three,  or 
some  other  limited  number  of  aspects  or  constituents  of  a  sup- 
posed object,  closer  analysis  shows  that  the  variety  contained 
in  this  object,  if  really  existent  at  all,  must  be  boundless,  so 
that  the  dilemma:  "Either  no  true  variety  of  the  supposed 
type  is  real,  or  else  this  variety  involves  an  infinity  of  as- 
pects," has  often  been  used  as  a  critical  test,  to  discredit  some 
commonly  received  view  as  to  the  unity  and  variety  of  the 
universe  or  of  some  supposed  portion  thereof.  Mr.  Bradley 
has  not  been  wanting  in  his  appeal  to  this  type  of  critical 
argument.  But  to  give  this  argument  its  due  weight,  when 
it  conies  as  a  device  for  discrediting  all  efforts  to  define  the 
nature  of  Individuals,  requires  one  to  attack  the  whole  ques- 
tion of  the  actual  Infinite,  a  question  that  recent  discussions 
of  the  Philosophy  of  Mathematics  have  set  in  a  decidedly  new 
light,  but  that  these  discussions  have  also  made  more  techni- 
cal than  ever.  If  I  am  to  be  just  to  this  matter,  I  must  there- 
fore needs  wander  far  afield.  Nobody,  I  fear,  except  a 
decidedly  technical  reader,  will  care  to  follow.  I  have,  there- 
fore, hesitated  long  before  venturing  seriously  to  entertain  the 
plan  of  saying,  either  here  or  elsewhere,  anything  about  what 
seems  to  me  the  true,  and,  as  I  believe,  the  highly  positive 
implication,  of  Mr.  Bradley's  apparently  most  destructive 
arguments  concerning  Individual  Being  and  concerning  the 
meaning  of  the  world  of  Appearance. 

Yet  the  problem  of  the  reality  of  infinite  variety  and  multi- 
plicity, —  a  problem  thus  made  so  prominent  by  Mr.  Bradley's 
whole  method  of  procedure,  —  is  one  that  no  metaphysician 


476  SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY 

can  permanently  evade.  The  doctrine  that  the  conception  of 
the  actually  infinite  multitude  is  a  self -contradictory  concep- 
tion is  a  familiar  thesis  ever  since  Aristotle.  If  this  thesis  is 
correct,  as  Mr.  Bradley  himself  assumes,  then  Mr.  Bradley's 
results,  as  regards  the  limitations  of  our  human  knowledge  of 
the  Absolute,  appear  to  be  inevitable,  and  the  effort  of  these 
present  lectures  to  define  the  essential  relations  of  the  world 
and  the  individual  must  fail.  On  the  other  hand,  however,  if, 
as  I  believe,  the  very  doctrine  of  the  true  nature  of  Individual 
Being,  which  these  lectures  defend,  enables  us,  for  the  first 
time  perhaps  in  the  history  of  the  discussion  of  the  Infinite, 
to  give  a  precise  statement  of  the  sense  in  which  an  Infinite 
Multitude  can,  without  contradiction,  be  viewed  as  determi- 
nately  real,  — then  a  discussion  of  Mr.  Bradley's  position,  and 
of  the  whole  problem  of  the  One,  the  Many,  and  the  Infinite, 
will  prove  an  important  supplement  to  our  Theory  of  Being, 
and  an  essential  basis  for  the  vindication  of  our  human 
knowledge  of  the  general  constitution  of  Reality.  And  so  I 
must  feel  that,  if  the  present  task  is  extended  and  technical, 
the  goal  is  nothing  less  than  the  defence  of  what  I  take  to  be 
a  true  theory  of  the  whole  meaning  of  life. 

And  so  I  am  now  minded  to  undertake  the  task  of  vindicat- 
ing the  concept  of  the  actual  Infinite  against  the  charge  of 
self-contradiction.  I  am  minded,  also,  to  attempt  the  closely 
related  task  of  defending  the  concept  of  the  Self  against  a  like 
charge.  In  the  same  connection  I  shall  undertake  to  show 
something  of  the  true  relations  of  the  One  and  the  Many  in 
the  real  world.  And  in  the  course  of  this  enterprise  I  shall 
found  the  positive  discussion  upon  a  criticism  of  Mr.  Bradley's 
position. 

But  now,  at  this  point,  let  any  weary  reader  whom  my 
lectures  may  have  already  disheartened,  —  but  who  neverthe- 
less may  kindly  have  proceeded  so  far,  —  turn  finally  back. 
When  you  enter  the  realm  of  Mr.  Bradley's  Absolute,  it  is 
much  as  it  is  at  the  close  of  Victor  Hugo's  Toilers  of  the 
Sea,  after  the  ship  that  carries  away  the  lady  has  sunk  below 
the  horizon,  and  after  the  tide  has  just  covered  the  rock  where 


SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY  477 

the  desolate  lover  had  been  watching.  "There  was  nothing," 
says  the  poet,  in  his  last  words,  "there  was  nothing  now 
visible  but  the  sea."  As  for  me,  I  love  the  sea,  and  am  minded 
to  find  in  it  life,  and  individuality,  and  explicit  law.  And  1 
go  upon  that  quest.  Whoever  is  not  weary,  and  is  not  yet 
disheartened,  and  is  fond  of  metaphysical  technicality,  is  wel- 
come to  join  the  quest.  But  in  the  sea  there  are  also,  as  Vic- 
tor Hugo  explained  to  us,  very  strange  monsters.  And  Mr. 
Bradley,  too,  in  his  book,  has  had  much  to  say  of  the  "  mon- 
sters," philosophic  and  psychological,  that  the  realm  of  Ap- 
pearance contains,  even  in  the  immediate  neighborhood  of  the 
Absolute.  We  shall  meet  some  such  reputed  "  monsters  "  in 
the  course  of  this  discussion.  Let  him  who  fears  such  trouble 
also  turn  back. 

In  this  essay,  I  shall  first  try  to  state  Mr.  Bradley's  theses 
as  to  the  problem  of  the  One  and  the  Many.  Then  I  shall  try 
to  show  how  he  himself  seems  to  suggest  a  way  by  which,  if 
we  follow  that  way  far  enough,  something  may  be  done  to  solve 
what  he  leaves  apparently  hopeless.  And,  finally,  I  shall  pro- 
ceed upon  the  way  thus  opened  until  we  have  found  whither 
it  leads.  We  shall  find  it  inevitably  leading  to  the  concep- 
tion of  the  actually  Infinite.  We  shall  examine  the  known 
difficulties  of  that  conception,  and  shall  at  last  solve  them  by 
means  of  our  own  conception  of  the  nature  of  determinateness 
and  Individuality. 

I.   Mr.  Bradley1 's  First  Illustrations  of  His  Problem 

The  general  doctrine  of  the  Absolute  which  Mr.  Bradley 
maintains  is  the  result  of  a  critical  analysis  of  a  number  of 
metaphysical  conceptions  which  he  opposes.  Mr.  Bradley's 
work  is  divided  into  two  books.  The  first  book,  entitled 
Appearance,  has  a  mainly  negative  result.  Beginning  with 
the  examination  of  the  traditional  distinction  between  primary 
and  secondary  qualities,  Mr.  Bradley  shows  that  this  distinc- 
tion is  incapable  of  furnishing  a  consistent  account  of  the  rela- 
tion of  the  phenomenal  to  the  real.  The  problem  of  inherence, 


478  SUPPLEMENTARY   ESSAY 

attacked  next  in  order,  is  declared  to  be,  upon  the  basis  of  the 
ordinary  conception  of  things  and  qualities,  and  of  their  rela- 
tionship, insoluble.  The  reason  given  in  this  case  is  typical 
of  Mr.  Bradley's  position  throughout  the  book,  and,  despite 
the  general  familiarity  of  the  argument  to  readers  of  the 
Hegelian  and  Herbartian  discussions  of  the  concept  of  the 
thing,  deserves  special  mention  at  this  point. 

A  thing  is  somehow  to  be  one,  and  "  it  has  properties,  ad- 
jectives which  qualify  it.1  We  say  that  the  thing  is  this  or 
that,  predicating  of  it  the  adjectives  that  express  its  qualities." 
But  it  cannot  be  "all  its  properties  if  you  take  them  each 
severally."  "Its  reality  lies  somehow  in  its  unity."  "But 
if,  on  the  other  hand,  we  inquire  what  there  can  be  in  the 
thing  besides  its  several  qualities,  we  are  baffled  once  more. 
We  can  discover  no  real  unity  existing  outside  these  qualities, 
or,  again,  existing  within  them."  To  the  hypothesis  that  the 
unity  of  the  thing  may  be  sufficiently  expressed  by  asserting 
that  "the  qualities  are,  and  are  in  relation,"  Mr.  Bradley 
replies  that  the  meaning  of  is  remains  still  doubtful  when  we 
say,  "  One  quality,  A  is  in  relation  with  another  quality,  B " 
(p.  20).  For  still  one  does  not,  by  here  using  is,  intend  to 
reduce  A  to  simple  identity  with  its  relations  to  jB,  and  so  one 
is  led  to  say,  "  The  word  to  use,  when  we  are  pressed,  should 
not  be  is,  but  only  has."  But  the  has  seems  metaphorical. 
"  And  we  seem  unable  to  clear  ourselves  from  the  old  dilemma, 
If  you  predicate  what  is  different,  you  ascribe  to  the  subject 
what  it  is  not;  and  if  you  predicate  what  is  not  different  you 
say  nothing  at  all."  Nor  does  one  better  the  case  (p.  21)  if 
one  amends  the  phraseology  here  in  question  by  asserting  that 
the  relation  belongs  equally  to  both  A  and  B,  instead  of  lim- 
iting the  assertion  in  form  to  A  alone.  If  the  relation,  how- 
ever, be  no  mere  attribute  of  A  or  of  B,  or  of  both  of  them, 
but  a  "  more  or  less  independent "  fact,  namely,  the  fact  that 
"There  is  a  relation  C  in  which  A  and  B  stand,""then  the 
problem  of  the  unity  of  the  thing  becomes  the  problem  as  to 

1  Page  19.  I  cite  throughout  from  the  second  edition  of  Appearance 
and  Eeality. 


SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY  479 

the  genuine  tie  that  binds  both  A  and  B  to  their  now  rela- 
tively independent  relation  C.  For  C  is  now  supposed  to 
possess  an  existence  which  is  not  that  of  A  or  B,  but  some- 
thing apart  from  either.  This  tie  which  unites  A  and  B,  in 
the  thing,  to  C,  hereupon  appears  as  a  new  fact  of  relation, 
D,  viz.,  the  fact  that  A  and  B  are  so  related  to  C  that  C 
becomes  their  relation  to  each  other.  "But  such  a  make- 
shift at  once  leads  to  the  infinite  process.  The  new  relation 
D  can  be  predicated  in  no  way  of  C,  or  of  A  and  B;  and 
hence  we  must  have  recourse  to  a  fresh  relation,  E,  which 
comes  between  D  and  whatever  we  had  before.  But  this 
must  lead  to  another,  F;  and  so  on  indefinitely."  The  con- 
sequence is  that  we  are  not  aided  by  letting  the  "  qualities  and 
their  relation  fall  entirely  apart."  "There  must  be  a  whole 
embracing  what  is  related,  or  there  would  be  no  differences, 
and  no  relation."  This  remark  applies  not  merely  to  things, 
and  to  the  relations  that  are  to  bind  into  unity  their  qualities, 
but  to  space,  and  time,  and  to  every  case  where  varieties  are 
in  any  way  related.  But  although  Mr.  Bradley  asserts  thus 
early  the  general  principle  that  variety  must  always  find  its 
basis  in  unity,  he  wholly  denies  that,  in  the  present  case,  we 
have  yet  found  or  defined  what  the  unity  in  question  can  be. 
He  denies,  namely,  that  the  relational  system  offered  to  us  so 
far  by  the  qualities  supposed  to  be  inherent  in  the  one  thing, 
or  to  be  related  to  one  another,  contains,  or  can  be  made  to 
contain,  any  principle  adequate  to  accomplish  the  required 
task,  or  to  "  justify  the  arrangement "  that  we  try  to  make  in 
conceiving  the  thing  and  its  qualities  as  in  relational  unity. 

II.    The  General  Problem  of  "  Relational  Thought " 

The  defect  in  all  these  accounts  of  the  nature  of  the  thing 
is  not  due,  according  to  Mr.  Bradley's  view,  to  any  accidental 
faults  of  definition.  The  defect  depends  upon  a  dilemma  that 
first  fully  comes  to  light  when  the  problem  about  relations  and 
qualities  is  considered  for  itself,  and  apart  from  the  special 
issue  about  the  thing.  The  task  of  expounding  this  dilemma 


480  SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY 

Mr.  Bradley  undertakes  in  Chapter  III  of  his  first  book. 
Here  his  thesis  is  (p.  25),  that  "The  arrangement  of  given 
facts  into  relations  and  qualities  may  be  necessary  in  practice, 
but  it  is  theoretically  unintelligible." 

The  true  reason  why  the  concept  of  the  thing  involved  the 
foregoing  paradoxes  is  now  to  become  more  obvious.  It  is  set 
forth  in  three  successive  theses.  First  (p.  26) :  "  Qualities 
are  nothing  without  relations."  For  qualities  are  different 
from  one  another.  "  Their  plurality  depends  on  relation,  and 
without  that  relation  they  are  not  distinct"  (p.  28).  Even 
were  qualities  conceived  as  in  themselves  wholly  separated 
from  one  another,  and  only  for  us  related,  still  (p.  29)  "  Any 
separateness  implies  separation,  and  so  relation,  and  is  there- 
fore, when  made  absolute,  a  self -discrepancy."  "If  there  is 
any  difference,  then  that  implies  a  relation."  Mr.  Bradley 
enforces  this  assertion  by  a  reference,  made  with  characteristic 
skill,  to  the  paradoxes  of  the  Herbartian  metaphysic  of  the 
einfache  Qualitaten  and  the  zufallige  Ansichten  (p.  30). 

But  if  it  is  impossible  to  conceive  qualities  without  rela- 
tions, it  is  equally  unintelligible  to  take  qualities  together 
with  relations.  For  the  qualities  cannot  be  resolved  into  the 
relations.  And,  if  taken  with  the  relations,  they  "  must  be, 
and  must  also  be  related"  (p.  31).  But  now  afresh  arises  the 
problem  as  to  how,  in  this  instance,  the  variety  involved  in 
the  also  is  reducible  to  the  unity  which  each  quality  must  by 
itself  possess.  For  a  quality,  A,  is  made  what  it  is  both  by 
its  relations  (since,  as  we  have  seen,  these  are  essential  to  its 
being  as  a  quality),  and  by  something  else,  namely,  by  its  own 
inner  character.  A  has  thus  two  aspects,  both  of  which  can 
be  predicated  of  it.  Yet  "  without  the  use  of  a  relation  it  is 
impossible  to  predicate  this  variety  of  A,"  just  as  it  was  im- 
possible, except  by  the  use  of  a  relation,  to  predicate  the  vari- 
ous qualities  of  one  thing.  We  have  therefore  to  say  that, 
within  A,  both  its  own  inner  character,  as  a  quality,  and  its 
relatedness  to  other  facts,  are  themselves,  as  varieties,  facts; 
but  such  facts  as  constitute  the  being  of  A,  so  that  they  are 
united  by  a  new  relation,  namely,  by  the  very  relation  which 


SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY  481 

makes  them  constitutive  of  A.  Thus,  however,  "  we  are  led 
by  a  principle  of  fission  which  conducts  us  to  no  end."  "The 
quality  must  exchange  its  unity  for  an  internal  relation." 
This  diversity  "demands  a  new  relation,  and  so  on  without 
limit." 

For  similar  reasons,  a  relation  without  terms  being  "  mere 
verbiage  "  (p.  32),  it  follows  that  since  the  terms  imply  quali- 
ties, relation  without  qualities  is  nothing.  But,  on  the  other 
hand,  if  the  relation  stands  related  to  the  qualities,  if  it  is 
anything  to  them,  "we  shall  now  require  a  new  connecting 
relation."  But  hereupon  an  endless  process  of  the  same  kind 
as  before  is  set  up  (p.  33).  "The  links  are  united  by  a  link, 
and  this  bond  of  union  is  a  link  which  has  also  two  ends ;  and 
these  require  each  a  fresh  link  to  connect  them  with  the  old." 

The  importance  for  Mr.  Bradley  of  the  negative  result  thus 
reached  lies  in  the  great  generality  of  the  conceptions  here  in 
question,  and  in  the  consequent  range  covered  by  these  fun- 
damental considerations.  "The  conclusion,"  says  Mr.  Brad- 
ley, "to  which  I  am  brought,  is  that  a  relational  way  of 
thought  —  any  one  that  moves  by  the  machinery  of  terms  and 
relations  —  must  give  appearance  and  not  truth.  It  is  a  make- 
shift, a  device,  a  mere  practical  compromise,  most  necessary, 
but  in  the  end  most  indefensible.  We  have  to  take  reality  as 
many,  and  to  take  it  as  one,  and  to  avoid  contradiction.  We 
want  to  divide  it,  or  to  take  it,  when  we  please,  as  indivisible ; 
to  go  as  far  as  we  desire  in  either  of  these  directions,  and  to 
stop  when  that  suits  us.  .  .  .  But  when  these  inconsistencies 
are  forced  together  .  .  .  the  result  is  an  open  and  staring 
inconsistency." 

In  the  subsequent  chapters  of  Mr.  Bradley's  first  book,  he 
himself  sees,  in  a  great  measure,  merely  an  application  of  the 
general  principle  just  enunciated  to  such  special  problems  as 
are  exemplified  by  Space,  by  Time,  by  Causation,  by  Activity, 
and  by  the  Self.  For  all  these  metaphysical  conceptions  are 
defined  in  terms  of  a  "  relational  way  "  of  thinking,  and  involve 
the  problem  of  the  One  and  the  Many.  To  be  sure,  the  dis- 
cussion of  the  Self,  in  Chapters  IX  and  X,  brings  the  problem 
2i 


482  SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY 

into  decidedly  new  and  important  forms,  but  does  not,  in  Mr. 
Bradley's  opinion,  furnish  any  acceptable  ground  for  its  posi- 
tive solution.  "We  have  found,"  he  says,  "puzzles  in  reality, 
besetting  every  way  in  which  we  have  taken  it."  The  solu- 
tion of  these  puzzles,  if  ever  discovered,  must  be  "  a  view  not 
obnoxious  to  these  mortal  attacks,  and  combining  differences 
in  one  so  as  to  turn  the  edge  of  criticism  "  (p.  114).  The  mere 
appeal,  however,  to  the  fact  of  self-consciousness,  does  not 
furnish  this  needed  explicit  harmony  of  unity  and  variety. 
The  Self  does,  indeed,  unite  diversity  and  unity  in  a  pro- 
foundly important  way;  but  the  mere  fact  that  this  is  some- 
how done  does  not  show  us  how  it  is  done. 

III.    The  Problem  of  the  One  and  the  Many  as  Insoluble  by 
Thought,  yet  solved  by  the  Absolute 

Despite  this  elaborate  exposition  of  the  apparent  hopeless- 
ness of  the  problem  as  to  the  One  and  the  Many,  Mr.  Brad- 
ley's  own  theory  of  the  Absolute,  proposed  in  his  second  book, 
turns  upon  asserting  that  in  Reality  unity  and  diversity  are 
positively  reconciled,  and  reconciled,  moreover,  not  by  a  sim- 
ple abolition  of  either  of  the  apparently  opposed  principles, 
but  in  a  way  that  leaves  to  each  its  place.  For  first  (p.  140), 
"  Reality  is  one  in  this  sense  that  it  has  a  positive  nature  ex- 
clusive of  discord.  .  .  .  Its  diversity  can  be  diverse  only 
so  far  as  not  to  clash."  Yet,  on  the  other  hand,  "Appearance 
must  belong  to  reality,  and  it  must,  therefore,  be  concordant 
and  other  than  it  seems.  The  bewildering  mass  of  phenome- 
nal diversity  must  hence  somehow  be  at  unity  and  self -con- 
sistent; for  it  cannot  be  elsewhere  than  in  reality,  and  reality 
excludes  discord.  Or,  again,  we  may  put  it  so :  The  real  is 
individual.  It  is  one  in  the  sense  that  its  positive  character 
embraces  all  differences  in  an  inclusive  harmony."  Further, 
"To  be  real  .  .  .  must  be  to  fall  within  sentience"  (p.  144). 
Or,  again,  to  be  real  (p.  146)  is  "to  be  something  which  comes 
as  a  feature  and  aspect  within  one  whole  of  feeling,  some- 
thing which,  except  as  an  integral  element  of  such  sentience. 


SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY  483 

has  no  meaning  at  all."  In  consequence,  "The  Absolute  is 
one  system, "  and  "  its  contents  are  .  .  .  sentient  experience." 
"  It  will  hence  be  a  single  and  all-inclusive  experience,  which 
embraces  every  partial  diversity  in  concord  "  (p.  147).  It  fol- 
lows that,  in  the  Absolute,  none  of  the  diversities  which  are 
to  us  so  perplexing,  and  which,  as  exemplified  by  the  cases  of 
thing,  quality,  relation,  Self,  and  the  rest  of  the  appearances, 
are  so  contradictory  in  their  seeming,  are  wholly  lost.  For 
the  Absolute,  on  the  contrary,  these  diversities  are  all  pre- 
served ;  only  they  are  "  transmuted  "  into  a  whole,  which  is,  in 
ways  of  which  we  have  only  a  most  imperfect  knowledge, 
internally  harmonious.  As  to  the  hints  that  we  possess, 
regarding  the  nature  of  the  Absolute,  they  are  summarized 
as  follows:  "Immediate  presentation"  (p.  159)  gives  us  the 
experience  of  a  "whole"  which  "contains  diversity,"  but 
which  is,  nevertheless,  "not  parted  by  relations."  On  the 
other  hand,  "relational  form,"  where  known  to  us,  points 
"everywhere  to  an  unity,"  —  "a  substantial  totality,  beyond 
relations  and  above  them,  a  whole  endeavoring  without  success 
to  realize  itself  in  their  detail"  (p.  160).  Such  facts  and  con- 
siderations give  us  "  not  an  experience,  but  an  abstract  idea  " 
of  a  "unity  which  transcends  and  yet  contains  every  mani- 
fold appearance."  "We  can  form  the  general  idea  of  an  abso- 
lute experience  in  which  phenomenal  distinctions  are  merged, 
a  whole  becomes  immediate  at  a  higher  stage  Avithout  losing 
any  richness."  But  meanwhile  we  have  "a  complete  inability 
to  understand  this  concrete  unity  in  detail." 

The  ground  of  this,  our  inability,  is  the  one  already  illus- 
trated, namely,  the  necessary  incapacity  of  a  "  relational  way 
of  thinking  "  to  give  us  anything  definite  except  Appearance, 
or  to  harmonize  the  One  and  the  Many  in  concrete  fashion,  or 
to  free  our  explicit  accounts  of  the  unity  from  the  contradic- 
tions and  infinite  processes  heretofore  illustrated.  A  more 
precise  exposition  of  the  general  defects  of  thought  in  ques- 
tion, Bradley  undertakes  to  furnish  in  his  fifteenth  chapter, 
under  the  title  Thought  and  Reality.  Here  the  nature  of  rela- 
tional thought,  its  inevitable  sundering  of  the  what  and  the 


484  SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY 

that,  and  its  inevitably  infinite  process  in  trying  to  unite  them 
again,  are  two  topics  discussed,  with  the  result,  as  Mr.  Bradley 
states  the  case,  that  "Thought  desires  a  consummation  in 
which  it  is  lost,"  as  "the  river"  runs  "into the  sea,"  and  "the 
self"  loses  itself  "in  love."  For  every  act  of  thought,  in 
affirming  its  predicate  of  the  subject,  though  all  the  while 
knowing  that  the  quality  or  adjective  is  not  the  existent,  ex- 
plicitly faces  its  own  Other,  namely,  precisely  its  object,  the 
existent  of  which  it  thinks,  the  subject  to  which  it  applies  its 
predicates.  This  existent,  by  virtue  of  its  "  sensuous  infini- 
tude," or  vaguely  endless  wealth  of  presented  features,  always 
defies  our  efforts  exhaustively  to  define  it  in  ideal  terms 
(p.  176);  and,  by  virtue  of  its  "immediacy"  (p.  177),  pos- 
sesses "the  character  of  a  single  self-subsistent  being,"  —  a 
character  apparently  inconsistent  with  the  "sensuous  infini- 
tude." Our  thought,  however,  endeavoring  to  characterize 
this  Other,  seeks  to  make  ideally  explicit  how,  despite  its 
endless  wealth  of  presented  features,  it  can  be  still  a  single 
individual,  —  a  system  of  variety  in  unity.  Attempting  this 
task,  thought  is  obliged  to  use  the  "  relational  form  "  in  char- 
acterizing the  subject;  and  this  at  once  makes  impossible  the 
expression,  in  ideal  terms,  of  either  the  self-dependence  or  the 
immediacy  which  the  subject  claims  (p.  178).  For,  analyzing 
the  subject,  in  order  to  define  its  wealth  of  content,  thought, 
in  the  fashion  before  illustrated  in  the  case  of  things,  quali- 
ties, etc.,  is  led  to  an  infinite  process,  since  every  relation 
defined  requires  new  relations  to  make  it  comprehensible. 
Both  the  internal  and  the  external  relations  of  the  subject  and 
of  its  contents,  accordingly  prove  to  be  inexhaustible.  Never, 
then,  is  thought's  ideal  system  of  predicates  adequate  to  the 
subject.  The  "  sensuous  infinitude  "  or  undefined  wealth  that 
the  subject  at  first  presents,  turns,  while  we  think,  into  the 
explicitly  infinite  series  of  relational  predicates.  Moreover, 
even  were  thought's  system  ever  completed,  "that  system 
would  not  be  the  subject."  For  if  it  were,  "it  would  wholly 
lose  the  relational  form." 

The  result  is  that  thinking  "desires  to  possess,"  as  its  end 


SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY  485 

and  goal,  a  character  of  "  immediate,  self-dependent,  all-inclu- 
sive individuality  "  (p.  179),  while  "  individuality  cannot  be 
gained  while  we  are  confined  to  relations."  Thought,  however, 
although  not  possessing  the  features  of  reality  here  in  ques- 
tion, can  recognize  them  as  its  own  Other,  can  "  desire  them  " 
(p.  180)  "  because  its  content  has  them  already  in  an  incom- 
plete form.  And  in  desire  for  the  completion  of  what  none 
has  there  is  no  contradiction."  "But,  on  the  other  hand 
(p.  181),  such  a  completion  would  prove  destructive;  such  an 
end  would  emphatically  make  an  end  of  mere  thought.  It 
would  J>ring  the  ideal  content  into  a  form  which  would  be 
reality  itself,  and  where  mere  truth  and  mere  thought  would 
certainly  perish."  "It  is  this  completion  of  thought  beyond 
thought  which  remains  forever  an  Other."  "Thought  can 
understand  that,  to  reach  its  goal,  it  must  get  beyond  rela- 
tions. Yet  in  its  nature  it  can  find  no  other  working  means 
of  progress." 

Hence,  "our  Absolute,"  once  more,  will  include  the  differ- 
ences of  thought  and  reality,  of  "what"  and  "that."  "The 
self-consciousness  of  the  part,  its  consciousness  of  itself  even 
in  opposition  to  the  whole,  —  all  will  be  contained  within  the 
one  absorbing  experience.  For  this  will  embrace  all  self- 
consciousness  harmonized,  though,  as  such,  transmuted  and 
suppressed."  But  Mr.  Bradley  still  insists  that  "we  cannot 
possibly  construe  such  an  experience  to  ourselves." 

IV.    Mr.  Bradley' 's  Definition  of  "  What  would  Satisfy  the 
Intellect "  as  to  the  One  and  the  Many 

Mr.  Bradley's  critics  have  very  commonly  expressed  their 
disapproval  of  the  extremely  delicate  position  in  which,  by 
this  theory,  our  finite  thinking  is  left.  We  are  obliged  to 
define  the  Heal  as  a  system  wherein  unity  and  diversity  are 
harmonized.  We  are  to  conceive  this  reality  as  a  "  sentient 
experience."  And  in  the  Absolute  Experience,  nothing  of  our 
finite  variety  is  to  be  wholly  lost,  but  all  is  to  be  "trans- 
muted." Yet  every  instance,  selected  from  our  own  human 


486  SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY 

experience,  where,  through  a  process  of  thinking,  or  a  type 
of  mediated  consciousness,  we  men  seem  to  have  won  any  sort 
of  explicit  synthesis  and  harmony  of  the  One  and  the  Many, 
is  sternly  rejected  by  Mr.  Bradley,  as  furnishing  no  satisfac- 
tory guide  to  the  final  knowledge  of  the  way  in  which,  in  the 
Absolute,  unity  and  manifoldness  are  united.  The  critics 
have,  accordingly,  been  sometimes  disposed  to  accuse  Mr. 
Bradley  of  seeking,  in  his  Absolute,  for  bare  identity  without 
diversity ;  and  sometimes  tempted,  on  the  other  hand,  to  ask, 
complainingly,  what  sort  of  harmony  would  satisfy  him,  and 
why  he  supposes  that  any  harmony  of  the  One  and  the  Many 
is  attainable  at  all,  even  for  the  Absolute,  when  he  himself 
rejects,  as  mere  appearance,  every  proffered  means,  whereby 
harmony  is  to  be  defined. 

In  answer,  Mr.  Bradley  has  been  led,  in  his  second  edition, 
to  discuss,  in  an  appendix,  the  problem  of  "  Contradiction  and 
the  Contrary,"  with  special  reference  to  its  bearing  upon  the 
matter  here  at  issue.  The  relation  of  the  theory  of  the  con- 
trary to  the  problem  of  the  relation  of  unity  and  diversity 
appears  in  the  fundamental  thesis  of  the  discussion  in  ques- 
tion.1 This  thesis  is  as  follows  (p.  562):  "A  thing  cannot, 
without  an  internal  distinction,  be  (or  do)  two  different  things ; 
and  differences  cannot  belong  to  the  same  thing,  in  the  same 
point,  unless  in  that  point  there  is  diversity.  The  appearance 
of  such  union  may  be  fact,  but  is  for  thought  a  contradiction." 
In  expounding  this  statement  of  the  principle  of  contradiction, 
Mr.  Bradley  first  explains  that  the  thesis  "  does  not  demand 
mere  sameness,"  which  to  thought  "would  be  nothing."  A 
mere  tautology  "  is  not  a  truth  in  any  way,  in  any  sense,  or 
at  all."  The  Law  of  Contradiction,  then,  does  not  forbid 
diversity.  If  it  did,  "it  would  forbid  thinking  altogether." 
But  the  difficulty  of  the  situation  arises  from  the  fact  that, 
"Thought  cannot  do  without  differences;  but,  on  the  other 
hand,  it  cannot  make  them.  And,  as  it  cannot  make  them,  so 
it  cannot  receive  them  from  the  outside,  and  ready-made." 

1  Note  A  of  the  second  edition,  pp.  562,  sqq.  —  a  paper  reprinted  from 
Mind  with  omission. 


SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY  487 

Thought  demands  a  reason  and  ground  for  diversity.  It  can 
neither  pass  from  A  to  B  without  a  reason,  nor  accept  as  final 
the  fact  that,  external  to  thought's  process,  A  and  B  are 
found  conjoined.  If  thought  finds  a  diversity,  it  demands  that 
this  be  "brought  to  unity  "  (p.  562).  And  so,  if  the  mere  fact 
of  the  conjunction  of  A  and  B  appears,  then  thought  must 
"  either  make  or  accept  an  arrangement  which  to  it  is  wanton 
and  without  reason,  —  or,  having  no  reason  for  anything  else, 
attempt,  against  reason,  to  identify  them  simply"  (p.  563). 
Nor  can  one  meet  this  difficulty  by  merely  asserting  that  there 
are  certain  ultimate  complexes,  given  in  experience,  such  that 
in  them  unity  and  variety  are  presented  as  obviously  con- 
joined, while  thought  is  to  explain  the  "  detail  of  the  world  " 
in  terms  of  these  fundamental  complexes.  No  such  "bare 
conjunction  "  is  or  possibly  can  be  given;  for  when  we  find  any 
kind  of  unity  in  diversity,  that  is,  when  we  find  diversities 
conjoined,  we  always  also  find  a  "  background  "  (p.  564)  which 
is  a  "  condition  of  the  conjunction's  existence  "  so  that  "  the 
conjunction  is  not  bare,  but  dependent,"  and  is  presented  to 
the  intellect  as  "  a  connection,  the  bond  of  which  is  at  present 
unknown."  "The  intellect,  therefore,  while  rejecting  what- 
ever is  alien  to  itself,  if  offered  as  Absolute,  can  accept  the 
inconsistent  if  taken  as  subject  to  conditions." 

Meanwhile,  the  "mere  conjunction,"  if  taken  as  such,  is 
"  for  thought  contradictory  "  (p.  565).  For  as  soon  as  thought 
makes  the  conjunction  its  object,  thought  must  "  hold  in  unity  " 
the  elements  of  the  conjunction.  But  finding  these  elements 
diverse,  thought  "can  of  itself  supply  no  internal  bond  by 
which  to  hold  them  together,  nor  has  it  any  internal  diversity 
by  which  to  maintain  them  apart."  If  one  replies  that  the 
elements  are  offered  to  thought  "together  and  in  conjunction," 
Mr.  Bradley  retorts  that  the  question  is  "how  thought  can 
think  what  is  offered."  If  thought  were  itself  possessed  of 
conjoining  principles,  of  "a  'together,'  a  'between,'  and  an 
'all  at  once,'  "  as  its  own  internal  principle,  it  could  use  them 
to  explain  the  conjunction  offered.  But,  as  a  fact  (p.  566), 
"  Thought  cannot  accept  tautology,  and  yet  demands  unity  in 


488  SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY 

diversity.  But  your  offered  conjunctions,  on  the  other  side, 
are  for  it  no  connections  or  ways  of  union.  They  are  them- 
selves merely  other  external  things  to  be  connected."  It  is, 
then,  "idle  from  the  outside  to  say  to  thought,  'Well,  unite, 
but  do  not  identify. '  How  can  thought  unite  except  so  far  as 
in  itself  it  has  a  mode  of  union?  To  unite  without  an  inter- 
nal ground  of  connection  and  distinction,  is  to  strive  to  bring 
together  barely  in  the  same  point,  and  that  is  self-contradic- 
tion." Things,  then,  "are  not  contradictory  because  they  are 
diverse, "  but  "  just  in  so  far  as  they  appear  as  bare  conjunc- 
tions." Therefore  it  is  that  a  mere  together,  "in  space  or 
time,  is  for  thought  unsatisfactory  and,  in  the  end,  impossible." 
But,  on  the  other  hand,  every  such  untrue  view  must  be  tran- 
scended, and  the  Real  is  not  self-contradictory,  despite  its 
diversities,  since  their  real  unity  is,  in  the  Absolute,  present. 
If  one  now  asks  what  then  "would  satisfy  the  intellect, 
supposing  it  could  be  got "  (p.  568),  Mr.  Bradley  points  out 
that  if  the  ground  of  unity  is  "  external  to  the  elements  into 
which  the  conjunction  must  be  analyzed,"  then  the  ground 
"  becomes  for  the  intellect  a  fresh  element,  and  in  itself  calls 
for  synthesis  in  afresh  point  of  unity."  "But  hereon,"  he 
continues,  "because  in  the  intellect  no  intrinsic  connections 
were  found,  ensues  the  infinite  process."  This  being  the 
problem  "  The  remedy  might  be  here.  If  the  diversities  were 
complementary  aspects  of  a  process  of  connection  and  distinc- 
tion, the  process  not  being  external  to  the  elements,  or,  again, 
a  foreign  compulsion  of  the  intellect,  but  itself  the  intellect's 
own  proprius  motus,  the  case  would  be  altered.  Each  aspect 
would  of  itself  be  a  transition  to  the  other  aspect,  a  transition 
intrinsic  and  natural  at  once  to  itself,  and  to  the  intellect. 
And  the  Whole  would  be  a  self-evident  analysis  and  syn- 
thesis of  the  intellect  itself  by  itself.  Synthesis  here  has 
ceased  to  be  mere  synthesis,  and  has  become  self -completion ; 
and  analysis,  no  longer  mere  analysis,  is  self-explication. 
And  the  question  how  or  why  the  many  are  one  and  the  one 
is  many  here  loses  its  meaning.  There  is  no  why  or  how 
beside  the  self-evident  process,  and  towards  its  own  differ- 


SUPPLEMENTARY   ESSAY  489 

ences  this  whole  is  at  once  their  how  and  their  why,  their 
being,  substance,  and  system,  their  reason,  ground,  and  prin- 
ciple of  diversity  and  unity  "  (id).  Here,  Mr.  Bradley  insists, 
the  Law  of  Contradiction  "  has  nothing  to  condemn."  Such  an 
union  or  "  identity  of  opposites  "  would  not  conflict  with  the 
Law  of  Contradiction,  but  would  rather  fulfil  the  law.  If 
"  all  that  we  find  were  in  the  end  such  a  self-evident  and  com- 
plete whole,"  the  end  of  the  intellect,  and  so  of  philosophy, 
would  have  been  won.  But  Mr.  Bradley  is  (p.  569)  "unable 
to  verify  a  solution  of  this  kind."  Hence,  as  he  says, 
"  Against  my  intellectual  world  the  Law  of  Contradiction  has 
claims  nowhere  satisfied  in  full."  Therefore  "they  are  met 
in  and  by  a  whole  beyond  the  mere  intellect."  It  is,  however, 
no  "  abstract  identity  "  that  thus  satisfies  the  demands  of  the 
intellect.  "  On  the  other  hand,  I  cannot  say  that  to  me  any 
principle  or  principles  of  diversity  in  unity  are  self-evident." 
In  consequence,  while  "  self -existence  and  self- identity  are  to 
be  found,"  they  are  to  be  looked  for  neither  in  "bare  identity," 
nor  in  a  relapse  into  a  "stage  before  thinking  begins,"  but  in 
"  a  whole  beyond  thought,  a  whole  to  which  thought  points 
and  in  which  it  is  included."  Diversities  exist.  Therefore 
(p.  570)  "they  must  somehow  be  true  and  real."  "Hence, 
they  must  be  true  and  real  in  such  a  way  that  from  A  or  B 
the  intellect  can  pass  to  its  further  qualification  without  an 
external  denomination  of  either.  But  this  means  that  A  and 
B  are  united,  each  from  its  own  nature,  in  a  whole  which  is 
the  nature  of  both  alike."  It  is  the  failure  of  the  intellect  to 
define  this  whole  positively  and  in  detail,  which  is  expressed 
in  all  the  contradictions  of  the  theory  of  appearance. 

SECTION  II.    THE  ONE  AND  THE  MANY  WITHIN  THE  KEALM 
OF  THOUGHT  OB  OF  INTERNAL  MEANINGS 

So  far,  then,  for  a  summary  of  Mr.  Bradley 's  general  view 
regarding  the  mystery  of  unity  in  variety,  and  so  much  for 
the  reasons  which  have  led  him,  on  the  one  hand,  to  maintain 
that  real  identity  is  never  "simple,"  or  abstract,  but  involves 


490  SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY 

real  differences,  and,  on  the  other  hand,  to  insist  that  the  true 
ground  of  this  union  of  identity  and  difference  is  always,  to 
us,  and  to  "thought,"  something  not  manifest,  but  only  pre- 
supposed as  "beyond  thought."  What  are  we  to  hold  of  this 
doctrine? 

I.    Thought  does  Develope  its  own  Varieties  of  Internal  Meaning 

Our  first  comment  must  repeat  what  several  of  Mr.  Bradley's 
critics  have  noticed.  This  is,  that  within  at  least  one,  per- 
haps limited,  but  still  in  any  case  for  us  mortals  important 
region,  Mr.  Bradley  himself  finds  and  reports  the  working  of 
a  very  "self-evident"  principle  of  "diversity  in  unity." 

This  is  the  region  in  which  thought  is  itself  the  object 
whose  process  and  movement,  whose  paradoxes  and  whose  end- 
less series  of  internal  distinctions,  we  observe,  or  experience, 
while  we  read  Mr.  Bradley's  book,  or  any  similarly  deep  ex- 
amination of  the  realm  of  the  "intellect."  In  his  Logic 
Mr.  Bradley  long  since  gave  us  a  brilliant  account  of  the 
movement  of  thought,  —  an  account  that  he  here  lays  at  the 
basis  of  his  discussion.  The  truth  of  a  considerable  portion 
of  this  earlier  analysis  of  the  thinking  process,  I  should 
unhesitatingly  accept.  Now  it  may  be  indeed  that  the  pro- 
cesses of  thought,  as  Mr.  Bradley  examines  them,  constitute 
not  only  a  relatively  insignificant  aspect  of  Eeality,  but  also  a 
portion  to  be  labelled  "Appearance."  Yet  the  point  here  in 
question  is  not,  for  the  moment,  the  dignity  or  the  extent  of 
the  thinking  process  in  the  life  of  the  universe,  but  solely  the 
exemplary  value  of  the  thinking  process  as  an  instance  of  a 
"self-evident,"  even  if  extremely  abstract  union  of  unity  and 
variety,  of  identity  and  diversity  of  aspects,  in  an  objective 
realm.  For  thought,  too,  is  a  kind  of  life,  and  belongs  to  the 
realm  of  Keality,  even  if  only  as  other  appearances  belong. 

What  we  in  general  mean  by  this  comment  may  first  be  very 
briefly  developed.  The  special  applications  will  indeed  detain 
us  longer.  Mr.  Bradley  requires  us  to  point  out  to  him  a  case 
where  diversities  shall  be  "  complementary  aspects  of  a  process 


SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY  491 

of  connection  and  distinction,"  the  process  being  no  "foreign 
compulsion  of  the  intellect,  but  itself  the  intellect's  own 
proprius  motus  ...  a  self-evident  analysis  and  synthesis  of 
the  intellect  itself  by  itself."  He  fails  to  find,  as  he  looks 
through  the  World  of  Appearance,  any  case  of  the  sort  such 
as  is  sufficient  to  furnish  any  self-evident  "  principle  or  princi- 
ples of  diversity  in  unity."  Now  we  here  desire  to  make  a 
beginning  in  meeting  his  demand.  We  ask  whether  he  has 
wholly  taken  account  of  the  case  that  lies  nearest  of  all  to  him 
in  his  research.  This  case  is  directly  furnished  by  the  intel- 
lect. Now  the  intellect  may  indeed  not  be  all  Reality. 
Thought  may  indeed,  in  the  end,  have  to  look  "  beyond  itself  " 
for  its  own  "Other."  Yet  Keality  owns  the  intellect,  too, 
along  with  the  other  Appearances.  By  Mr.  Bradley's  hy- 
pothesis, Appearance  is  der  Gottheit  lebendiges  Kleid,  if  by 
Oottheit  we  mean,  for  the  moment,  his  Absolute.  We  have 
a  right  to  use  any  rag  torn  by  our  own  imperfect  knowledge 
from  this  garment,  to  give  us,  if  so  may  be,  a  hint  of  the 
weaving  of  the  whole.  The  hint  may  prove  poor.  But  only 
the  trial  can  tell.  And  so,  why  not  see  how  it  is  that  the  in- 
tellect, powerless  though  it  be  to  make  explicit  the  union  of 
unity  and  diversity  in  the  cases  where  experience  furnishes 
from  without  "conjunctions"  and  their  "background,"  still 
manages  to  unite  unity  and  diversity  in  its  own  internal 
processes?  Might  not  this  throw  some  light  upon  even  our 
ultimate  problem? 

For  the  intellect,  after  all,  has  indeed  its  proprius  motus.  If 
it  had  not,  how  should  we  be  thinking?  And  who  has  more 
often  considered  the  proprius  motus  of  the  intellect,  who  has 
more  frequently  insisted  that  "thought  involves  analysis  and 
synthesis,"  than  Mr.  Bradley  himself?  Now  the  intellect,  as 
Mr.  Bradley  observes,  is  discontent  with  its  presented  "ex- 
ternal "  object,  the  "  conjunction  "  in  space  or  in  time,  because 
of  the  uncomprehended  unity  in  diversity  of  this  presented 
object.  The  intellect  seeks  to  define  the  ground  of  this  unity, 
in  case  of  the  Thing,  or  of  the  world  of  Qualities  and  Rela- 
tions, or  of  Space,  or  of  Time,  or  in  case  of  any  of  the  other 


492  SUPPLEMENTARY   ESSAY 

Appearances  that  seem  external  to  thought.  The  intellect 
fails.  Why?  "Becaxise  it  cannot  do  without  differences,  but, 
on  the  other  hand,  it  cannot  make  them"  (p.  562).  But  can 
Mr.  Bradley  wholly  mean  this  assertion  that  the  intellect  cannot 
make  differences?  In  the  chapters  upon  the  Thing,  and  upon 
the  other  objects  presented,  as  from  without,  to  the  intellect, 
we  are  indeed  shown,  when  Mr.  Bradlej's  argument  is  once 
accepted,  that  thought  does  not  make,  and  does  decline  to 
receive  ready  made,  the  differences  offered  as  real  by  these 
external  objects,  so  long  as  they  are  taken  in  their  abstraction. 
But  how  is  it  possible  for  thought  to  discover  the  very  fact 
that  it  cannot  make,  and  that  it  declines  to  receive,  certain 
differences,  without  itself  making,  of  its  own  motion,  certain 
other  differences,  whose  internal  unity  it  knows  just  in  so  far 
as  it  makes  them?  For  when  thought  sets  out  to  solve  a 
problem,  it  has  a  purpose.  This  is  its  own  purpose,  and  is,  also, 
in  so  far  an  unity,  not  furnished  as  from  without,  but,  in 
the  course  of  the  thinking  process,  developed  as  from  within. 
When,  after  struggling  to  solve  its  problem,  and  to  fulfil  its 
purpose,  thought  finds  itself  in  the  presence  of  a  puzzle  that 
is  so  far  ultimate,  what,  according  to  Mr.  Bradley,  does  it  see 
as  the  essence  of  this  puzzle  ?  It  sees  that  a  given  hypothesis 
as  to  the  unity  of  A  and  B  (where  A  and  B  are  the  supposed 
"external"  diversities,  but  where  the  hypothesis  itself  has 
been  reflectively  developed  into  its  consequences  through  the 
inner  movement  of  thought),  —  that  this  hypothesis,  I  say, 
either  leads  to  various  consequences  which  directly  contradict 
one  another,  or  else,  by  an  internal  and  logical  necessity,  leads 
to  an  "  infinite  process, "  —  in  other  words,  to  an  infinite 
variety  of  consequences.  In  either  case,  in  addition  to  what 
thought  so  far  finds  puzzling  about  A  and  B,  thought  further 
sees  a  diversity,  and  a  diversity  that  is  now  not  the  presented 
"conjunction"  of  A  and  B,  but  a  necessary  diversity  con- 
structively developed  by  thought's  own  movement.  Thought 
learns  that  its  own  purpose  developes  this  variety.  For  the 
hypothesis  about  A  and  B  (viz.,  that  they  are  "in  relation"  or 
are  "  substantive  and  adjective, "  or  whatever  else  the  hypothe- 


SUPPLEMENTARY   ESSAY  493 

sis  may  be)  has  developed,  within  itself,  as  thought  has  re- 
flected upon  it,  a  certain  internal  multiplicity  of  aspects.  That 
the  hypothesis  developes  these  diversities,  is  a  fact,  —  but  a 
fact  how  discovered?  The  only  answer  is,  by  Reflection. 
Thought  developes  by  its  own  processes  the  meaning,  i.e.  to 
use  our  own  phraseology,  the  "internal  meaning"  of  this 
hypothesis.  The  hypothesis  perhaps  leads  to  a  self-contra- 
diction concerning  the  nature  of  A  and  B.  In  that  case,  the 
hypothesis,  taken  apart  from  A  and  B  themselves,  as  an  object 
for  reflection,  is  seen  to  imply  that  some  account  of  A,  or  of 
B,  or  of  A  B,  is  both  true  and  false.  Now  truth  is  diverse 
from  falsity,  and  whoever  observes  that  a  given  hypothesis 
implies,  through  the  development  of  its  "internal  meaning," 
the  coexistent  truth  and  falsity  of  the  same  account  of  a  sup- 
posed external  fact,  has  observed  a  fact  not  now  about  A  and 
B  as  such,  but  about  this  internal  meaning  of  the  hypothesis, 
taken  by  itself,  — a  fact  lying  within  the  circle  of  thought's 
own  movement.  This  fact  is  a  diversity  developed  by 
thought's  proprius  motus. 

Or,  again,  the  hypothesis  leads  to  the  "infinite  process." 
An  "  endless  fission  "  is  sometimes  said  to  "  break  out "  in  the 
world  of  conceived  relations  and  qualities.  This  "  principle 
of  endless  fission  "  "conducts  us  to  no  end"  (p.  31).  "Within 
the  relation  "  the  plurality  of  the  differences  is  said  to  "  beget 
the  infinite  process"  (p.  180).  Now,  when  thought  sees  that 
all  this  must  be,  and  is,  the  necessary  outcome  of  "  a  relational 
way  of  thought "  (p.  33),  thought  again  sees  a  fact,  but  a  fact 
now  present  in  its  own  world  of  ideas,  and  as  the  "  self-evi- 
dent "  outcome  of  its  reflective  effort  to  express  its  own  pur- 
pose. But,  as  we  insist,  despite  the  diversity,  thought's 
purpose  is,  in  each  case  of  this  type,  consciously  One.  It  is 
the  purpose  to  find  the  ground  for  the  conjunction  of  A  and  B. 
Reflection  sees  that  this  one  purpose,  left  to  its  own  develop- 
ment, becomes  diverse,  and  expresses  its  own  identity  in  a 
variety  of  aspects.  When  thought  sees  this  result  of  its  own 
efforts,  and  sees  the  result  as  necessary,  as  universal,  as  the 
consequence  of  a  relational  way  of  thinking,  then  I  persist- 


494  SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY 

ently  ask,  Does  not  thought  here  at  least  see  in  one  instance, 
not  only  that  identity  and  diversity  are  conjoined,  but  how 
they  are  this  time  connected,  and  how  the  one  of  them,  here 
at  least,  expresses  itself  in  the  other? 

May  we  not,  then,  for  the  moment,  overlook  our  failures  as 
to  the  understanding  of  the  world  external  to  thought,  and  turn 
to  the  consideration  of  our  success  in  discovering  something  of 
the  internal  movement  of  thought.  For,  in  our  ignorance,  our 
first  interest  is  in  observing  not  how  little  we  know  (since  our 
ignorance  itself  is,  indeed,  brought  home  to  us  at  every 
instant  of  our  finitude),  but  in  making  a  beginning  at  consid- 
ering how  much  we  can  find  out.  We  wanted  to  see  how  any 
unity  could  develope  a  plurality.  We  have  already  seen,  if  but 
dimly.  Shall  we  not  begin  to  use  our  insight? 

I  conclude,  then,  so  far,  that,  if  the  argument  of  Mr.  Bradley 
is  sound,  in  the  very  sense  in  which  I  myself  most  accept  its 
soundness,  a  "principle  of  diversity  in  unity,"  in  the  case  of 
the  internal  meaning  of  our  ideas,  is  already,  in  several  con- 
crete cases,  "  self-evident."  It  remains  for  us  to  become  better 
acquainted  with  this  principle.  I  must  explicitly  note  that 
this  union  of  One  and  Many  in  thought  has  to  be  a  fact  in  the 
universe  if  it  is  self-evident,  and  has  to  be  self-evident  if  Mr. 
Bradley's  argument  is  sound. 

II.   The  Principle  of  Thought,  which  is  responsible  for  the  Infinite 
Processes.     Definition  of  a  Recurrent  Operation  of  Thought 

The  principle  in  question  can  be  made  more  manifest  by  a 
further  reflection.  The  most  important  instances  in  Mr. 
Bradley's  argument  are  those  wherein  the  "  endless  fission  " 
appears ;  and  what  has  led  to  this  "  endless  fission  "  which  so 
far  forms  our  principal  instance  of  the  internal  development 
of  variety  out  of  unity,  appears,  when  reviewed,  as  in  general, 
this:  A  certain  "conjunction"  was  offered  to  us  by  sense. 
This  "  conjunction "  thought  undertook,  by  means  of  an  hy- 
pothesis, to  explain.  The  resulting  process  of  "fission" 
had,  however,  wholly  to  do  with  the  internal  meaning  of  this 


SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY  495 

hypothesis,  and  no  longer  with  the  original  conjunction.  It 
was  a  fact  within  the  life  of  thought.  The  hypothesis  ran 
thus :  "  The  conjunction  is  to  be  explained  as  a  relation,  hold- 
ing its  own  terms  in  unity."  Hereupon  thought  undertook  so 
to  think  this  hypothesis  as  to  find  its  whole  meaning.  Thought 
hereupon  reflectively  observed,  "  But  our  relation,  as  soon  as 
defined,  becomes  also  a  term  of  a  new  relation."  More  in  par- 
ticular, the  original  question  ran,  "What  is  the  unity  of  A 
and  B?"  The  hypothesis  said,  "Their  unity  lies  in  their 
relation  R;  for  the  terms  of  a  relationship  are  linked  and  uni- 
fied by  that  relationship."  The  reflective  criticism  runs,  "But 
in  creating  R,  as  the  ideal  link  between  A  and  B,  regarded  now 
not  as  they  were  externally  conjoined,  but  ideally  as  terms  of 
a  relationship,  we  have  only  recreated,  in  the  supposed  complex 
R  A,  or  R  B,  or  A  R  B,  the  type  of  situation  originally  pre- 
sented. For  A  and  B  were  to  be  objects  of  thought.  They 
therefore  needed  a  link.  Therefore,  as  we  said,  they  were  to 
be  viewed  as  terms  linked  by  their  relation.  But  the  relation 
R,  as  soon  as  it  is  made  an  object  of  thought,  becomes  a  term 
for  the  same  reason  which  made  us  regard  A  and  B  as  terms. 
For  our  implied  principle  was  that  objects  of  thought,  if  vari- 
ous, and  yet  united,  are  to  be  viewed  as  terms  of  a  relation- 
ship. Our  thinking  process  must  therefore  proceed  to  note, 
that  if  A  and  B  are  terms  to  be  linked,  R  also,  by  the  same 
right,  is  a  term  to  be  linked  to  A  or  to  B,  or  to  both,  and  so 
on  ad  infinitum." 

But  the  gist  of  this  reflection  may  be  better  generalized  thus : 
A  thinking  process  of  the  type  here  in  question  recreates, 
although  in  a  new  instance,  the  very  kind  of  ideal  object  that, 
by  means  of  its  process,  it  proposed  to  alter  into  some  more 
acceptable  form.  The  change  of  situation  which  it  intended, 
leads,  and  must  lead,  to  a  reinstatement  of  essentially  the 
same  sort  of  situation  as  that  which  was  to  be  changed.  Or, 
again,  The  proposed  solution  reiterates  the  problem  in  a  new 
shape.  Therefore,  the  operation  of  thought  here  in  question 
is  what  one  may  call,  in  the  most  general  terms,  an  iterative, 
or,  again,  a  recurrent,  operation,  —  an  operation  whose  result 


496  SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY 

reinstates,  in  a  new  instance,  the  situation  which  gave  rise  to 
the  operation,  and  to  which  the  operation  was  applied. 

Now,  quite  apart  from  the  special  circumstances  of  the 
problem  about  A  and  B,  the  observation  that  reflection  makes 
upon  the  general  nature  of  any  iterative  or  recurrent  process  of 
thinking,  becomes  at  once  of  great  interest  for  the  comprehen- 
sion of  the  question  about  the  One  and  the  Many.  We  want 
to  find  some  case  of  an  unity  which  developes  its  own  differ- 
ences out  of  itself.  Well,  what  more  simple  and  obvious 
instance  could  we  hope  for  than  is  furnished  by  an  operation 
of  thought,  such  that,  when  applied  to  a  given  situation,  this 
operation  necessarily,  and  in  a  way  that  we  can  directly  follow, 
reinstates,  in  a  new  case,  the  very  kind  of  situation  to  which 
it  was  applied?  For  this  operation  is  a  fact  in  the  world.  It 
begins  in  unity.  It  developes  diversity.  Let  us,  then,  wholly 
drop,  for  the  time,  the  problem  about  A  and  B,  in  so  far  as 
they  were  taken  as  facts  of  sense  or  of  externality.  Their 
"conjunction,"  presented  "from  without,  "we  may  leave  in  its 
mystery,  until  we  are  ready  to  return  to  the  matter  later.  We 
have  found  something  more  obvious,  viz.,  an  iterative  opera- 
tion of  thought,  one  which,  when  applied,  is  actually  observed 
to  develope  out  of  one  purpose  many  results,  by  recreating  its 
own  occasion  for  application.  Now  let  us  proceed  with  our 
generalization.  Let  there  be  found  any  such  operation  of 
thought,  say  C.  C  is  to  be  one  ideal  operation  of  our  thought 
just  in  so  far  as  C  expresses  a  single  purpose.  But  let  C  be 
applied  on  occasion  to  some  material,  —  no  matter  what.  Let 
the  material  be  M.  Hereupon,  as  we  reflect,  let  us  be  sup- 
posed to  observe  that  the  logical  necessary  result  of  applying 
C  to  M,  the  result  of  expressing  the  purpose  in  question  in 
this  material,  or  of  ideally  weaving  the  material  M  into  har- 
mony with  the  purpose  (7,  is  the  appearance  of  a  new  material 
for  thought,  viz.,  M' .  Let  us  be  supposed  to  observe,  also, 
that  M' ,  taken  as  a  content  to  be  thought  about,  gives  the  same 
occasion  for  the  application  of  C  that  M  gave.  Let  the  appli- 
cation of  C  to  M'  be  next  observed  to  lead  to  Mn,  in  such  wise 
that  in  M"  there  lies  once  more  the  occasion  for  the  applica- 


SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY  497 

tion  of  C.  Let  this  series  be  observed  to  be  endless,  that  is, 
to  be  such  that,  consistently  with  its  nature,  it  can  possess  no 
last  term.  Then,  as  I  assert,  we  shall  see,  in  a  special  in- 
stance, how  the  endless  series  M,  M\  M" .  .  .  ,  just  as  a  series 
of  many  ideally  constructed  facts,  is  developed  by  the  one 
purpose,  C,  when  once  applied  to  any  suitable  material,  M; 
and  is  developed,  moreover,  by  internal  necessity,  as  the 
very  meaning  of  the  objects  M,  M',  etc.,  and  also  as  the 
meaning  of  the  operation  C  itself,  and  not  as  a  bare  con- 
junction given  from  "without  the  intellect."  Now  in  such 
a  case,  I  insist,  we  see  how  the  One  produces,  out  of  itself, 
the  Many. 

Nor  let  one,  objecting,  interpose  that  since  an  "  operation  " 
is  a  case  of  activity,  and  since  activity  has  been  riddled  by 
Mr.  Bradley's  critical  fire,  the  nature  of  every  operation  of 
thought  must  always  remain  mysterious.  Let  no  one  insist 
that  since  the  supposed  operation  C  is  one  fact,  and  its  mate- 
rial M  is  another  fact,  in  our  Avorld  of  ideal  objects,  the  rela- 
tion of  C  to  M  is  as  opaque  as  any  other  relation,  so  that  we 
do  not  understand  how  Cooperates  at  all,  nor  yet  how  it  changes 
M  into  M ',  nor  how  the  same  operation  C  can  persist,  and  be 
applied  to  M'  after  it  had  been  applied  to  M.  Let  no  one 
further  point  out  that  since  all  the  foregoing  account  of  (7,  and 
of  the  endless  series  M,  M',  M",  involves  Time  as  a  factor  in 
the  "operation,"  and  since  Time  has  been  shown  by  Mr.  Brad- 
ley to  be  a  mysterious  conjunction  of  infinite  complexity,  and 
so  to  be  mere  Appearance,  therefore  all  the  foregoing  remains 
mysterious.  For  to  all  such  objections  I  shall  reply  that  I  so 
far  pretend  to  find  "  self-evident "  about  the  iterative  processes 
of  thought,  only  so  much  as,  in  his  own  chosen  instances,  Mr. 
Bradley  finds  self-evident,  namely,  so  much  as  constitutes  the 
very  meaning  and  ground  of  his  condemnation  of  the  mysteri- 
ous and  baffling  Appearances.  That  the  endless  process  is 
implied  in  a  certain  way  of  thinking,  namely,  in  a  "relational 
way,"  Mr.  Bradley  reflectively  observes.  I  accept  the  observa- 
tion, so  far  as  it  goes,  in  the  cases  stated.  But  I  ask  why  this 
is  true.  The  answer  lies  in  seeing  that  the  endlessness  of  the 

i* 


498  SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY 

process  is  due  to  the  recurrent  character  of  the  operation  of 
thought  here  in  question.  This  relational  way  of  thinking 
so  operates  as  to  reinstate,  in  a  new  case,  the  very  type  of 
situation  that  the  explanation  desired  —  the  goal  of  the  opera- 
tion —  was,  in  the  former  case,  to  reduce  to  some  simple  unity. 
The  first  complexity  consequently  survives  the  operation, 
unreduced  to  unity;  while  a  new  complexity,  logically  (not 
psychologically)  due  to  the  operation  itself,  appears  as  some- 
thing necessarily  implied.  The  reapplication  of  the  same 
operation,  if  supposed  accomplished,  can  but  reinstate  afresh 
the  former  type  of  situation.  Hence  the  endless  process. 
Now  this  process  I  consider  not  in  so  far  as  it  is  a  mere  tem- 
poral series  of  events,  but  in  so  far  as  it  is  the  development, 
in  a  given  case,  of  what  a  certain  thought  means.  I  do  not 
assert  the  obvious  existence  of  an  Activity,  but  the  logical 
necessity  of  a  certain  series  of  implications.  The  true  mean- 
ing of  the  purpose  (7,  expressed  in  the  content  M,  logically 
gives  rise  to  M ',  which  demands  equally  to  be  considered  in  the 
light  of  (7,  and  thereupon  implies  M",  and  so  on.  Thus  our 
argument  does  not  depend  upon  a  theory  about  how  thought, 
as  an  "activity,"  is  a  possible  part  of  the  world  at  all.  I  do 
not  profess  now  to  explain,  say  from  a  psychological  point  of 
view,  the  inmost  nature  of  the  operation  in  question,  nor  yet 
to  find  self-evident,  in  this  place,  the  metaphysics  of  the  time 
process.  Mysteries  still  surround  us;  but  we  see  what  we  see. 
And  my  point  is  that  while  we  do  not  see  all  of  what  thought 
is,  nor  yet  how  it  is  able  to  weave  its  material  into  harmony 
with  its  purposes,  nor  yet  what  Time  is,  we  do  see  that  we 
think,  and  that  this  thought  has,  as  it  proceeds,  its  internal 
meaning,  and  that  this  meaning  has,  as  its  necessary  and  self- 
evident  result,  the  reinstatement,  in  a  new  case,  of  the  type 
of  situation  which  the  operation  of  the  thought  was  intended 
to  explain,  or  in  some  other  wise  to  transform.  When  M  is 
so  altered  by  the  operation  C  as  to  imply  M' ,  M",  and  so  on, 
as  the  endless  series  of  results  of  the  iterative  operation  of 
thought,  we  see  not  only  that  this  is  so,  but  why  this  is  so. 
And  unless  we  see  this,  we  see  nothing  whatever,  whether  in 


SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY  499 

Appearance  or  in  Reality.  And  here,  then,  the  relation  of 
Unity  and  Variety  is  clear  to  us. 

Our  generalization,  however,  of  the  process  upon  which  Mr. 
Bradley  insists,  enables  us  to  make  more  fruitful  and  positive 
our  result.  There  are  recurrent  operations  of  thought.  When- 
ever they  act,  they  imply,  upon  their  face,  endless  processes. 
Do  such  processes  inevitably  lead  us  to  results  wholly  vain 
and  negative?  Is  the  union  of  One  and  Many  which  they 
make  explicit  an  insignificant  union?  Or,  on  the  other  hand, 
is  this  union  typical  of  the  general  constitution  of  Reality? 

The  first  answer  is  that,  at  all  events  in  the  special  science 
of  mathematics,  processes  of  this  type  are  familiar,  and  lie  at 
the  basis  of  highly  and  very  positively  significant  researches. 
If  we  merely  name  a  few  such  instances  of  endless  processes, 
we  shall  see  that  iterative  thinking,  if  once  made  an  ideal,  — 
a  method  of  procedure,  — and  not  merely  dreaded  as  a  failure 
to  reach  finality,  becomes  a  very  important  part  of  the  life  of 
the  exact  sciences,  and  developes  results  which  have  a  very 
significant  grade  of  Reality. 

The  classic  instance  of  the  recurrent  or  iterative  operations 
of  thought  is  furnished,  in  elementary  mathematics,  by  the 
Number  Series.  A  recurrent  operation  first  developes  the 
terms  of  this  series;  and  thereby  makes  the  counting  of  ex- 
ternal objects,  and  all  that,  in  our  human  science,  follows 
therefrom,  possible.  A  secondary  recurrent  operation,  based 
upon  the  primary  operation,  appears  in  the  laws  governing  the 
process  called  the  "Addition"  of  whole  numbers.  A  tertiary 
and  once  more  recurrent  operation  appears  in  the  laws  governing 
Multiplication.1  In  consequence  of  this  recurrent  nature  of 

1  The  precise  sense  in  which  the  Number  Series  itself  is  the  outcome  of 
a  recurrent  operation  of  thought  will  be  explained,  in  general  accord  with 
Dedekind's  theory,  further  on.  Addition  and  Multiplication,  in  any  par- 
ticular instance,  as  in  the  adding  or  in  the  multiplying  of  7  and  5,  are  of 
course  operations  terminated  by  the  finding  of  the  particular  sum  or 
product,  and  in  so  far  they  are  finite  and  non-recurrent.  But  the  laws 
of  Addition  and  Multiplication  (e.g.,  the  Associative  law),  and  the  rela- 
tion of  both  these  operations  to  one  another  and  to  the  number  system, 


500  SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY 

the  thinking  processes  concerned,  the  number  series  itself  is 
endless;  the  results  of  addition  and  multiplication,  the  sums 
and  products  of  the  various  numbers,  are  not  only  endless, 
but  capable  of  endless  combinations;  and,  in  general,  the 
properties  of  numbers  are  themselves  infinitely  infinite  in 
number.  But  in  this  case  the  mathematician  does  not  mourn 
over  the  "  endless  fission  "  to  which  the  number  concepts  are 
indeed  due,  but  he  regards  the  numbers  as  a  storehouse  of 
positive  and  often  very  beautiful  novelties,  which  his  science 
studies  for  their  intrinsic  interest. 

If  mathematical  science  thus  begins,  in  the  simplest  con- 
struction, with  the  outcome  of  a  recurrent  process,  it  is  no 
wonder  that  the  later  development  of  the  science,  as  exempli- 
fied by  the  theories  of  negative  and  of  fractional  numbers,  of 
irrational  and  of  complex  numbers,  of  infinite  series  and  of 
infinite  products,  and  of  all  that,  in  Analysis  and  in  the  Theory 
of  Functions,  depends  upon  these  more  elementary  theories, 
is  everywhere  full  of  conceptions  and  methods  that  result  from 
observing  what  happens  when  an  operation  of  thought  is  recur- 
rent, or  is  such  as  to  reinstate,  in  its  expressions,  the  occasion 
for  new  expressions.  Without  such  recurrence,  and  without 
such  infinite  processes,  mathematical  science  would  be  reduced 
to  a  very  minute  fraction  of  its  present  range  and  importance. 

But  we  are  here  primarily  concerned  with  the  metaphysical 
aspect  of  the  recurrent  processes  of  thought.  Important  as  are 
the  countless  mathematical  instances  of  our  type  of  operations, 
we  must  so  deal  with  their  general  theory  as  to  be  able  to 
identify  the  results  of  recurrent  thinking  whenever  they  occur, 
whether  in  mathematics  or  in  other  regions  of  our  reflection. 

I  propose  here,  then,  first  to  illustrate,  and  then  to  discuss 
theoretically,  the  nature  and  ideal  outcome  of  any  recurrent 
operation  of  thought,  and  to  develope,  in  this  connection,  what 
one  may  call  the  positive  nature  of  the  concept  of  Infinite 

are  dependent,  in  part,  upon  the  fact  that  the  result  of  every  addition  or 
multiplication  of  whole  numbers  is  itself  a  whole  number,  uniquely  deter- 
mined, and,  as  a  number,  capable  of  entering  into  the  formation  of  new 
sums  and  products. 


SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY  501 

Multitude.  We  shall  here  see  how  there  are  cases,  —  and 
cases,  too,  of  the  most  fundamental  importance  for  the  Theory 
of  Being,  where  a  single  purpose,  definable  as  One,  demands 
for  its  realization  a  multitude  of  particulars  which  could  not 
be  a  limited  multitude  without  involving  the  direct  defeat  of 
the  purpose  itself.  We  shall  in  vain  endeavor  to  escape  from 
the  consequences  of  this  discovery  by  denouncing  the  purposes 
of  the  type  in  question  as  self -contradictory,  or  the  Infinite  in 
question  as  das  Schlecht-Unendliche.  On  the  contrary,  we 
shall  find  these  purposes  to  be  the  only  ones  in  terms  of  which 
we  can  define  any  of  the  fundamental  interests  of  man  in  the 
universe,  and  the  only  ones  whose  expression  enables  us  to 
explain  how  unity  and  diversity  are  harmonized  at  all,  or  how 
Being  gets  its  individuality  and  finality,  or  how  anything 
whatever  exists.  Having  made  this  clear,  we  shall  endeavor 
to  show,  positively,  that  the  concept  of  infinite  variety  in 
unity,  to  which  these  cases  lead  us,  is  consistent  in  itself,  and 
is  able  to  give  our  Theory  of  Being  true  definition. 

SECTION  III.  THEORY  OF  THE  SOURCES  AND  CONSEQUENCES 
OF  ANY  RECURRENT  OPERATION  OF  THOUGHT.  THE  NA- 
TURE OF  SELF-REPRESENTATIVE  SYSTEMS 

I  shall  begin  the  present  section  with  illustrations.  I  shall 
make  no  preliminary  assumption  as  to  how  our  illustrations 
are  related  to  the  ultimate  nature  of  things.  For  all  that  we 
at  first  know,  we  may  be  dealing,  each  time,  with  deceptive 
Appearance.  We  merely  wish  to  illustrate,  however,  how  a 
single  purpose  may  be  so  defined,  for  thought,  as  to  demand, 
for  its  full  expression,  an  infinite  multitude  of  cases,  so  that 
the  alternative  is,  "  Either  this  purpose  fails  to  get  expression, 
or  the  system  of  idealized  facts  in  which  it  is  expressed  con- 
tains an  infinite  variety."  Whether  or  no  the  concept  of  such 
infinite  variety  is  itself  self-contradictory,  remains  to  be  con- 
sidered later.1 

1  The  discussion  of  the  instances  and  conceptions  of  Multitude  and 
Infinity,  contained  in  what  follows,  is  largely  dependent  upon  various 


502  SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY 


y 


I.   First  Illustration  of  a  Self- Representative  System, 

The  basis  for  the  first  illustration  of  the  development  of  an 
Infinite  Multitude  out  of  the  expression  of  a  Single  Purpose, 

recent  contributions  to  the  literature  of  the  subject.  Prominent  among 
the  later  authors  who  have  dealt  with  our  problem  from  the  mathematical 
side,  is  George  Cantor.  For  his  now  famous  theory  of  the  Machtigkeiten 
or  grades  of  infinite  multitude,  and  for  his  discussions  of  the  purely 
mathematical  aspects  of  his  problem,  one  may  consult  his  earlier  papers, 
as  collected  in  the  Acta  Mathematica,  Vol.  II.  With  this  theory  of  the 
Machtigkeiten  I  shall  have  no  space  to  deal  in  this  paper,  but  it  is  of  great 
importance  for  forming  the  conception  of  the  determinate  Infinite.  Upon 
the  more  philosophical  aspects  of  the  same  researches,  Cantor  wrote  a 
brief  series  of  difficult  and  fragmentary,  but  fascinating  discussions  in  the 
Zeitschrift  fur  Philosophic  und  Philosophische  Kritik:  Bd.  88,  p.  224  ;  Bd. 
91,  p.  81 ;  Bd.  92,  p.  240.  In  recent  years  (1895-97)  Cantor  has  begun  a 
systematic  restatement  of  his  mathematical  theories  in  the  Mathematische 
Annalen :  Bd.  48,  p.  481 ;  Bd.  49,  p.  207.  Some  of  Cantor's  results  are 
now  the  common  property  of  the  later  text-books,  such  as  Dini's  Theory 
of  Functions,  and  Weber's  Algebra.  Upon  Cantor's  investigations  is  also 
based  the  remarkable  and  too  much  neglected  posthumous  philosophical 
essay  of  Benno  Kerry :  System  einer  Theorie  der  Grenzbegriffe  (Leipzig, 
1890) — a  fragment,  but  full  of  ingenious  observations.  The  general 
results  of  Cantor  are  summarized  in  a  supplementary  note  to  Couturat's 
Ulnfini  Mathematique  (Paris,  1896),  on  pp.  602-655  of  that  work.  Cou- 
turat's is  itself  the  most  important  recent  general  treatment  of  the  philo- 
sophical problem  of  the  Infinite ;  and  the  Third  Book  of  his  Second  Part 
(p.  441,  sqq.)  ought  to  be  carefully  pondered  by  all  who  wish  fairly  to  esti- 
mate the  "  contradictions  "  usually  attributed  to  the  concept  of  the  Infinite 
Multitude.  A  further  exposition  of  Cantor's  most  definite  results  is  given, 
in  a  highly  attractive  form,  by  Borel,  Lemons  sur  la  Theorie  des  Fonctions, 
Paris,  1898.  Side  by  side  with  Cantor,  in  the  analysis  of  the  fundamental 
problem  regarding  number,  and  multitude,  stands  Dedekind,  upon  whose 
now  famous  essay,  Was  Sind  und  Was  Sollen  die  Zahlen  ?  (2te  Auflage, 
Braunschweig,  1893),  some  of  the  most  important  of  the  recent  discussions 
of  the  nature  of  self-representative  systems  are  founded.  See  also  the 
valuable  discussion  of  the  iterative  processes  of  thought  by  G.  F.  Lipps,  in 
Wundt's  Studien  (Bd.  XIV,  Hft.  2,  for  1898)  ;  and  the  extremely  signifi- 
cant remarks  of  Poincare'  on  the  nature  of  mathematical  reasoning  in 
the  Bevue  de  Metaphysique  et  de  Morale  for  1894,  p.  370.  Other  refer- 
ences are  given  later  in  this  discussion. 


SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY  503 

which  we  shall  here  consider,  may  be  taken,  in  a  measure, 
from  that  world  "  external  to  thought "  whose  variety  we  still 
find  a  matter  of  "  mere  conjunction "  and  so  opaque.  For, 
despite  the  use  of  such  a  basis,  our  illustration  will  interest 
us  not  by  reason  of  this  aspect,  but  by  reason  of  the  opportu- 
nity thereby  furnished  for  carrying  out  a  certain  recurrent 
process  of  thought,  whose  internal  meaning  we  want  to  follow. 
We  are  familiar  with  maps,  and  with  similar  constructions, 
such  as  representative  diagrams,  in  which  the  elements  of 
which  a  certain  artificial  or  ideal  object  is  composed,  are  in- 
tended to  correspond,  one  to  one,  to  certain  elements  in  an 
external  object.1  A  map  is  usually  intended  to  resemble  the 
contour  of  the  region  mapped  in  ways  which  seem  convenient, 
and  which  have  a  decidedly  manifold  sensuous  interest  to  the 
user  of  the  map;  but,  in  the  nature  of  the  case,  there  is  no 
limit  to  the  outward  diversity  of  form  which  would  be  con- 
sistent with  a  perfectly  exact  and  mathematically  definable 
correspondence  between  map  and  region  mapped.  If  our 
power  to  draw  map  contours  were  conceived  as  perfectly  exact, 
the  ideal  map,  made  in  accordance  with  a  given  system  of 
projection,  could  be  defined  as  involving  absolutely  the  afore- 
said one  to  one  correspondence,  point  for  point,  of  the  surface 
mapped  and  the  representation.  And  even  if  one  conceived 
space  or  matter  as  made  up  of  indivisible  parts,  still  an  ideally 
perfect  map  upon  some  scale  could  be  conceived,  if  one  sup- 
posed it  made  up  of  ultimate  space  units,  or  of  the  ultimate 
material  corpuscles,  so  arranged  as  to  correspond,  one  by  one, 
to  the  ultimate  parts  that  a  perfect  observation  would  then 
distinguish  in  the  surface  mapped.  In  general,  if  A  be  the 
object  mapped,  and  A'  be  the  map,  the  latter  could  be  con- 
ceived as  perfect  if,  while  always  possessing  the  desired  degree 
of  visible  similarity  of  contours,  it  actually  stood  in  such  cor- 
respondence to  A  that  for  every  elementary  detail  of  Ay 
namely,  a,  6,  c,  d  (be  these  details  conceived  as  points  or 
merely  as  physically  smallest  parts;  as  relations  amongst  the 

1  Compare  the  general  discussion  of  "  Correspondence  "  in  the  course 
of  Lecture  VII. 


504  SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY 

parts  of  a  continuum,  or  as  the  relations  amongst  the  units  of 
a  mere  aggregate  of  particles),  some  corresponding  detail, 
a',  &',  c',  d',  could  be  identified  in  A',  in  accordance  with  the 
system  of  projection  used. 

All  this  being  understood,  let  us  undertake  to  define  a  map 
that  shall  be  in  this  sense  perfect,  but  that  shall  be  drawn 
subject  to  one  special  condition.  It  would  seem  as  if,  in  case 
our  map-drawing  powers  were  perfect,  we  could  draw  our  map 
wherever  we  chose  to  draw  it.  Let  us,  then,  choose,  for  once, 
to  draw  it  within  and  upon  a  part  of  the  surface  of  the  very  region 
that  is  to  be  mapped.  What  would  be  the  result  of  trying  to 
carry  out  this  one  purpose?  To  fix  our  ideas,  let  us  suppose, 
if  you  please,  that  a  portion  of  the  surface  of  England  is  very 
perfectly  levelled  and  smoothed,  and  is  then  devoted  to  the 
production  of  our  precise  map  of  England.  That  in  general, 
then,  should  be  found  upon  the  surface  of  England,  map  con- 
structions which  more  or  less  roughly  represent  the  whole  of 
England,  — all  this  has  nothing  puzzling  about  it.  Any  ordi- 
nary map  of  England  spread  out  upon  English  ground  would 
illustrate,  in  a  way,  such  possession,  by  a  part  of  the  surface  of 
England,  of  a  resemblance  to  the  whole.  But  now  suppose  that 
this  our  resemblance  is  to  be  made  absolutely  exact,  in  the  sense 
previously  defined.  A  map  of  England,  contained  within  Eng- 
land, is  to  represent,  down  to  the  minutest  detail,  every  contour 
and  marking,  natural  or  artificial,  that  occurs  upon  the  surface 
of  England.  At  once  our  imaginary  case  involves  a  new  prob- 
lem. This  is  now  no  longer  the  general  problem  of  map  mak- 
ing, but  the  nature  of  the  internal  meaning  of  our  new  purpose. 

Absolute  exactness  of  the  representation  of  one  object  by 
another,  with  respect  to  contour,  this,  indeed,  involves,  as  Mr. 
Bradley  would  say  to  us,  the  problem  of  identity  in  diversity ; 
but  it  involves  that  problem  only  in  a  general  way.  Our  map 
of  England,  contained  in  a  portion  of  the  surface  of  England, 
involves,  however,  a  peculiar  and  infinite  development  of  a 
special  type  of  diversity  within  our  map.  For  the  map,  in 
order  to  be  complete,  according  to  the  rule  given,  will  have  to 
contain,  as  a  part  of  itself,  a  representation  of  its  own  contour 


SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY  505 

and  contents.  In  order  that  this  representation  should  be  con- 
structed, the  representation  itself  will  have  to  contain  once 
more,  as  a  part  of  itself,  a  representation  of  its  own  contour 
and  contents;  and  this  representation,  in  order  to  be  exact, 
will  have  once  more  to  contain  an  image  of  itself;  and  so  on 
without  limit.  We  should  now,  indeed,  have  to  suppose  the 
space  occupied  by  our  perfect  map  to  be  infinitely  divisible, 
even  if  not  a  continuum.1 

One  who,  with  absolute  exactness  of  perception,  looked 
down  upon  the  ideal  map  thus  supposed  to  be  constructed, 
would  see  lying  upon  the  surface  of  England,  and  at  a  definite 
place  thereon,  a  representation  of  England  on  as  large  or  small 
a  scale  as  you  please.  This  representation  would  agree  in 
contour  with  the  real  England,  but  at  a  place  within  this  map 
of  England,  there  would  appear,  upon  a  smaller  scale,  a  new 
representation  of  the  contour  of  England.  This  representa- 
tion, which  would  repeat  in  the  outer  portions  the  details  of 
the  former,  but  upon  a  smaller  space,  would  be  seen  to  contain 
yet  another  England,  and  this  another,  and  so  on  without 
limit. 

That  such  an  endless  variety  of  maps  within  maps  could  not 
physically  be  constructed  by  men,  and  that  ideally  such  a  map, 
if  viewed  as  a  finished  construction,  would  involve  us  in  all 
the  problems  about  the  infinite  divisibility  of  matter  and  of 
space,  I  freely  recognize.  What  I  point  out  is  that  if  my  sup- 
posed exact  observer,  looking  down  upon  the  map,  saw  any- 
where in  the  series  of  maps  within  maps,  a  last  map,  such 
that  it  contained  within  itself  no  further  representation  of  the 
original  object,  he  would  know  at  once  that  the  rule  in  ques- 
tion had  not  been  carried  out,  that  the  resources  of  the  map- 
maker  had  failed,  and  that  the  required  map  of  England  was 
imperfect.  On  the  other  hand,  this  endless  variety  of  maps 
within  maps,  while  its  existence  as  a  fact  in  the  world  might 

1  In  the  older  discussions  of  continuity,  this  concept  was  very  generally 
confounded  with  that  of  infinite  divisibility.  The  confusion  is  no  longer 
made  by  mathematicians.  Continuity  implies  infinite  divisibility.  The 
converse  does  not  hold  true. 


506  SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY 

be  as  mysterious  as  you  please,  would,  in  one  respect,  present 
to  an  observer  who  understood  the  one  purpose  of  the  whole 
series,  no  mystery  at  all.  For  one  who  understood  the  pur- 
pose of  the  making  within  England  a  map  of  England,  and  the 
purpose  of  making  this  map  absolutely  accurate,  would  see 
precisely  why  the  map  must  be  contained  within  the  map,  and 
why,  in  the  series  of  maps  within  maps,  there  could  be  no  end 
consistently  with  the  original  requirement.  Mathematically 
regarded,  the  endless  series  of  maps  within  maps,  if  made 
according  to  such  a  projection  as  we  have  indicated,  would 
cluster  about  a  limiting  point  whose  position  could  be  exactly 
determined.  Logically  speaking,  their  variety  would  be  a 
mere  expression  of  the  single  plan,  "  Let  us  make  within  Eng- 
land, and  upon  the  surface  thereof,  a  precise  map,  with  all  the 
details  of  the  contour  of  its  surface."  Then  the  One  and  the 
Many  would  become,  in  one  respect,  clear  as  to  their  relations, 
even  when  all  else  was  involved  in  mystery.  We  should  see, 
namely,  why  the  one  purpose,  if  it  could  be  carried  out,  would 
involve  the  endless  series  of  maps. 

But  so  far  we  have  dealt  with  our  illustration  as  involving  a 
certain  progressive  process  of  map  making,  occurring  in  stages. 
We  have  seen  that  this  process  never  could  be  ended  without  a 
confession  that  the  original  purpose  had  failed.  But  now  sup- 
pose that  we  change  our  manner  of  speech.  Whatever  our 
theory  of  the  meaning  of  the  verb  to  be,  suppose  that  some  one, 
depending  upon  any  authority  you  please,  —  say  upon  the 
authority  of  a  revelation,  —  assured  us  of  this  as  a  truth 
about  existence,  viz.,  "  Upon  and  within  the  surface  of  Eng- 
land there  exists  somehow  (no  matter  how  or  when  made)  an 
absolutely  perfect  map  of  the  whole  of  England."  Suppose 
that,  for  an  instance,  we  had  accepted  this  assertion  as  true. 
Suppose  that  we  then  attempted  to  discover  the  meaning  im- 
plied in  this  one  assertion.  We  should  at  once  observe  that  in 
this  one  assertion,  "  A  part  of  England  perfectly  maps  all  Eng- 
land, on  a  smaller  scale,"  there  would  be  implied  the  assertion, 
not  now  of  a  process  of  trying  to  draw  maps,  but  of  the  con- 
temporaneous presence,  in  England,  of  an  infinite  number  of 


SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY  507 

maps,  of  the  type  just  described.  The  whole  infinite  series,  pos- 
sessing no  last  member,  would  be  asserted  as  a  fact  of  existence. 
I  need  not  observe  that  Mr.  Bradley  would  at  once  reject  such 
an  assertion  as  a  self-contradiction.  It  would  be  a  typical 
instance  of  the  sort  of  endlessness  of  structure  that  makes  him 
reject  Space,  Time,  and  the  rest,  as  mere  Appearance.  But  I 
am  still  interested  in  pointing  out  that  whether  we  continued 
faithful  to  our  supposed  revelation,  or,  upon  second  thought, 
followed  Mr.  Bradley  in  rejecting  it  as  impossible,  our  faith, 
or  our  doubt,  would  equally  involve  seeing  that  the  one  plan 
of  mapping  in  question  necessarily  implies  just  this  infinite 
variety  of  internal  constitution.  We  should,  moreover,  see 
how  and  why  the  one  and  the  infinitely  many  are  here,  at 
least  within  thought's  realm,  conceptually  linked.  Our  map 
and  England,  taken  as  mere  physical  existences,  would  indeed 
belong  to  that  realm  of  "bare  external  conjunctions."  Yet  the 
one  thing  not  externally  given,  but  internally  self-evident, 
would  be  that  the  one  plan  or  purpose  in  question,  namely,  the 
plan  fulfilled  by  the  perfect  map  of  England,  drawn  within 
the  limits  of  England,  and  upon  a  part  of  its  surface,  would, 
if  really  expressed,  involve,  in  its  necessary  structure,  the 
series  of  maps  within  maps  such  that  no  one  of  the  maps  was 
the  last  in  the  series. 

This  way  of  viewing  the  case  suggests  that,  as  a  mere  matter 
of  definition,  we  are  not  obliged  to  deal  solely  with  processes 
of  construction  as  successive,  in  order  to  define  endless  series. 
A  recurrent  operation  of  thought  can  be  characterized  as  one 
that,  if  once  finally  expressed,  would  involve,  in  the  region 
where  it  had  received  expression,  an  infinite  variety  of  serially 
arranged  facts,  corresponding  to  the  purpose  in  question.  This 
consideration  leads  us  back  from  our  trivial  illustration  to  the 
realm  of  general  theory. 

II.    Definition  of  a  Type  of  Self -Representative  Systems 

Let  there  be,  then,  any  recurrent  operation  of  thought,  or 
any  meaning  in  mind  whose  expression,  if  attempted,  in- 
volves such  a  recurrent  operation.  That  is,  let  there  be 


508  SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY 

any  internal  meaning  such  that,  if  you  try  to  express  it 
by  means  of  a  succession  of  acts,  the  ideal  data  which 
begin  to  express  it  demand,  as  a  part  of  their  own  mean- 
ing, new  data  which,  again,  are  new  expressions  of  the 
same  meaning,  equally  demanding  further  like  expression. 
Then,  if  you  endeavor  to  express  this  meaning  in  a  series  of 
successive  acts,  you  get  a  series  of  results,  M,  M',  M",  etc., 
which  can  never  be  finished  unless  the  further  expression  of 
the  purpose  is  somewhere  abandoned.  But  such  a  successive 
series  of  attempts  quickly  gets  associated  in  our  minds  with 
a  sense  of  disappointment  and  fruitlessness,  and  perhaps  this 
sense  more  or  less  blinds  us  to  the  true  significance  of  the  re- 
current thinking  processes.1  Let  us  try  to  avoid  this  mere 
feeling  by  dwelling  upon  the  definition  of  the  whole  system 
of  facts  which,  if  present  at  once,  would  constitute  the  com- 
plete expression  and  embodiment  of  this  one  meaning.  The 
general  nature  of  the  system  in  question  is  capable  of  a  posi- 
tive definition.  Instead  of  saying,  "  The  system,  if  gradually 
constructed  by  successive  stages,  has  no  last  member, "  we  can 
say,  in  terms  now  wholly  positive,  (1)  The  system  is  such 
that  to  every  ideal  element  in  it,  M,  M',  or,  in  general,  M (r), 
there  corresponds  one  and  only  one  other  element  of  the  system, 

1  Leere  Wiederholung  is  one  of  Hegel's  often  repeated  expressions  in 
regard  to  such  series.  There  is  a  certain  question-begging  involved  in 
condemning  a  process  because  of  one's  subjective  sense  of  fatigue.  Yet 
Bosanquet,  in  his  Logic  (Vol.  I,  p.  173),  begins  his  subtle  discussion  of 
infinite  number  and  series  with  an  instance  intended  to  illustrate  the 
merely  wearisome  vanity  of  search  that  seems  to  be  involved  in  a  case  of 
endless  looking  beyond  for  our  goal.  I  wholly  agree  with  Bosanquet  when 
he  demands  that  the  "element  of  totality"  (p.  173)  must  be  present  in 
the  work  of  our  thought,  —  that  is,  as  the  ultimate  test  of  its  truth. 
Wholeness  and  finality  our  object  must  have,  before  we  can  properly  rest 
in  the  contemplation  of  its  real  nature.  But  as  we  shall  soon  see,  the 
question  is  whether  a  real  and  objective  totality,  —  a  full  expression  of 
meaning,  —  cannot,  at  the  same  time,  be  the  explicit  expression  of  such 
an  internal  meaning  as  can  permit  no  last  term  in  any  series  of  successive 
operations  whereby  we  may  try  to  express  this  meaning.  We  tire  soon 
of  such  "tasks  without  end."  But  does  the  totum  simul  of  Reality  fail 
to  express,  in  detail,  the  whole  of  what  such  processes  mean  ? 


SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY  509 

which,  taken  in  its  order,  is  the  next  element  of  the  system. 
This  next  element  may  be  viewed,  if  we  choose,  as  derived 
from  its  predecessor  by  means  of  the  recurrent  process.  But 
it  may  also  be  viewed  as  in  a  relation  to  its  predecessor, 
which  is  the  same  as  the  relation  of  a  map  to  an  object 
mapped.  We  shall  accordingly  call  it,  henceforth,  the  Image 
or  Representation  of  this  former  element.  (2)  These  images 
are  all  distinct,  so  that  various  elements  always  have  various 
representatives.  For  the  recurrent  process  is  such  that,  in 
the  system  which  should  finally  express  it,  one  and  only  one 
element  would  be  derived  from  any  given  element,  or  would 
be  the  next  element  in  order  after  that  given  element.  (3)  At 
least  one  element,  M,  of  the  system,  although  imaged  by 
another,  is  itself  the  image  or  representative  of  no  other 
element,  so  that  only  a  portion  of  the  system  is  representa- 
tive. A  system  thus  defined  we  may  call,  for  our  present 
purposes,  an  instance  of  an  internally  Self-Representative 
System,  or,  more  exactly,  of  a  system  precisely  represented  by 
a  proper  fraction  or  portion  of  itself.  Of  the  whole  system 
thus  defined  we  can  at  once  assert  that  if  we  take  its  elements 
in  the  order  M,  M1,  M",  etc.,  there  is  indeed  no  last  member  in 
the  resulting  series.  The  system  is,  therefore,  defined  as  end- 
less merely  by  being  defined  as  thus  self -representative.  But 
since  the  self -representation  of  any  system  of  facts  is  capable 
of  definition,  as  a  single  internal  purpose,  in  advance  of  the 
discovery  that  such  purpose  involves  an  endless  series  of  con- 
stituents, we  may,  with  Dedekind,  use  the  generalized  concep- 
tion of  a  self -representation  of  the  type  here  in  question  as  a 
means  of  positively  defining  what  we  mean  by  an  infinite  sys- 
tem or  multitude  of  elements.  In  thus  proceeding,  we  further 
generalize  the  idea  which  the  perfect  map  of  England  has 
already  illustrated. 

The  positive  definition  of  the  concept  of  the  Infinite  thus 
resulting  has  no  small  speculative  interest.  Ordinarily  one 
defines  infinity  merely  by  considering  some  indefinitely  pro- 
longed series  of  successive  facts,  by  observing  that  the  series 
in  question  does  not,  or  at  least,  so  far  as  one  sees,  need  not, 


510  SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY 

end  at  any  given  point,  and  by  then  saying,  "A  series  taken 
thus  as  without  end,  may  be  called  infinite."  We  ourselves, 
so  far  in  this  discussion,  have  defined  our  infinite  processes 
on  the  whole  in  a  negative  way.  But  the  new  definition  of 
the  infinity  of  our  system  uses  positive  rather  than  negative 
terms.  The  conception  of  a  representation  or  of  an  imaging 
of  one  object  by  another,  is  wholly  positive.  This  conception, 
if  applied  to  the  elements  of  a  system  A,  with  the  proviso 
that  A',  the  image  or  the  representation  of  A,  shall  form  a 
constituent  portion  of  A  itself,  remains  still  positive.  But 
the  system  A,  if  defined  as  capable  of  this  particular  type  of 
self -representation,  proves,  when  examined,  to  contain,  if  it 
exists  at  all,  an  infinite  number  of  elements.  Whatever  the 
metaphysical  fate  of  the  ideal  object  thus  defined,  the  method 
of  definition  has  a  decided  advantage  over  the  older  ones. l  It 
may  be  well  at  once  to  quote  Dedekind's  original  statement 
and  illustration  of  the  conception  in  question,  in  the  passage 
cited  in  the  note :  — 

"  A  System  S  is  called  '  infinite '  when  it  is  similar 2  to  a 

1  More  or  less  vaguely  this  positive  property  of  infinite  multitudes  was 
observed  as  a  paradox  whenever  the  necessity  of  conceiving  "  one  infinite 
as  greater  than  another,"  or  as  containing  another  as  a  part  of  itself,  was 
recognized.    The  paradox  was  in  this  sense  felt  already  by  Aristotle  in  the 
third  Book  of  the  Physics,  ch.  5  (cf.  Spinoza's  Ethics,  Part  I,  Prop.  XV. 
Scholium,  where  the  well-known  solution  is  that  the  true  infinite  is  essen- 
tially indivisible,  having  no  parts  and  no  multitude).     Explicitly  the 
property  of  infinite  multitudes  here  in  question  was  insisted  upon  by 
Bolzano  in  his  Paradoxien  des   Unendlichen  (1851).     Cantor,  and,  in 
America,  Mr.  Charles  Peirce,  have  since  made  this  aspect  of  the  infinite 
multitudes  prominent.     Most  explicitly,  however,  Dedekind  has  built  up 
his  entire  theory  of  the  number  concept  upon  defining  the  infinite  multi- 
tude or  system  simply  in  these  positive  terms,  without  previous  definition 
of  any  numbers  at  all.     See  his  op.  cit.,  §  5,  64,  p.  17. 

2  In  previous  definitions,  in  Dedekind's  text,  two  systems  have  been 
defined  as  similar  (ahnlich),  when  one  of  them  can  be  made  to  corre- 
spond, element  for  element,  with  the  other,  any  two  different  elements 
having  different  representations.     And  a  proper  part  (echter  Theil),  or 
constituent  portion,  of  a  system,  has  been  defined  as  one  produced  by 
leaving  out  some  elements  of  the  whole. 


SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY  511 

constituent  (or  proper)  part  of  itself;  in  the  contrary  case 
S  is  called  a  '  finite  '  system. 

"  TJieorem.  — There  exist  infinite  systems.1 

"  Proof.  —  My  own  realm  of  thoughts  (meine  Gedankenwelt), 
i.e.  the  totality  S,  of  all  things  that  can  be  objects  of  my 
thought,  is  infinite.  For  if  s  is  an  element  of  S,  it  follows 
that  the  thought  s',  viz.,  the  thought,  That  s  can  be  object  of  my 
thought,  is  itself  an  element  of  S.  If  one  views  s'  as  the  image 
(or  representative)  of  the  element  s,  the  representation  S'  of 
the  system  S,  which  is  hereby  defined,  has  the  character  that 
the  representation  S'  is  a  constituent  portion  (echter  Theil)  of 
S,  since  there  are  elements  in  S  (for  example,  my  own  Ego)  (?) 
which  are  different  from  every  such  thought  s',  and  which  are, 
therefore,  not  contained  in  S'.  Finally,  it  is  plain  that  if 
a  and  6  are  different  elements  of  S,  their  images,  a'  and  6'  are 
also  different,  so  that  the  representation  of  S  is  distinct 
(deutlich)  and  similar.  It  follows  that  S  [by  definition],  is 
infinite." 

Here,  as  we  observe,  the  infinity  of  an  ideal  system  is  de- 
fined, and  in  a  special  case  proved,  without  making  any 
explicit  reference  to  the  number  of  its  elements.  That  this 
number,  negatively  viewed,  turns  out  to  be  no  finite  number, 
that  is,  to  be  that  of  a  multitude  with  no  last  term,  is 
for  Dedekind  a  result  to  be  later  proved,  —  a  secondary  con- 
sequence of  the  infinity  as  first  defined.  The  proof  that  my 
Oedankenwelt  is  infinite,  is  thus  not  my  negative  powerless- 
ness  to  find  the  last  term,  but  my  positive  power  to  image 
each  of  my  thoughts  s,  by  a  new  and  reflective  thought  s'.  It 
is  the  finite,  and  not  the  infinite,  that  here  appears  as  the  ob- 
ject negatively  definable.  For  a  finite  system  is  one  that 
cannot  be  adequately  represented  through  a  one-to-one  cor- 
respondence with  one  of  its  own  constituent  parts.2  In  any 

1  Es  giebt  unendliche  Systeme.     Es  giebt,  is  of  course  here  used  to 
express  existence  within  the  realm  of  consistent  mathematical  definitions. 
The  conception  of  Being  in  question  is  the  Third  Conception  of  our  own 
list. 

2  That  the  finite  and  infinite  here  quite  change  places  is  pointed  out  in 


512  SUPPLEMENTARY   ESSAY 

case,  the  infinite  multitude  of  the  elements  of  S  developes,  for 
thought,  out  of  the  single  positive  purpose  stated  so  sharply 
in  Dedekind's  definition. 

III.    Further  Illustrations  of  Self -Representative  Systems  of  the 
Type  here  Defined 

This  conception  of  a  system  that  can  be  exactly  represented 
or  imaged,  element  for  element,  by  one  of  its  own  constitu- 
ent parts,  has  of  course  to  meet  the  objection  that  such  an  idea 
appears,  upon  its  face,  paradoxical,  even  if  it  is  not  out  and 
out  self -contradictory.  But  before  judging  the  conception,  it 
is  well  to  have  in  mind  some  illustrations  of  its  range  of  ap- 
plication. A  comparison  of  these  will  show  that,  if  self-cor- 

an  interesting  way  by  Professor  Franz  Meyer,  in  his  Antrittsrede  at 
Tubingen  entitled  Zur  Lehre  vom  Unendlichen  (Tubingen,  1889).  The 
same  observation  is  made  by  Kerry  in  his  comments  upon  Dedekind  (in 
Kerry's  before-cited  Theorie  der  Grenzbegriffe,  p.  49).  Bolzano,  who,  in 
his  Paradoxien  des  Unendlichen  had  much  earlier  reached  a  position  in 
many  ways  near  to  that  of  Dedekind,  proves  the  existence  of  the  infinite 
in  a  closely  similar,  but  less  exact  way.  Schroeder,  in  his  very  elaborate 
essay  in  the  Abhandlungen  der  Leopold.  Carolinischen  Akad.  d.  Natur- 
forscher  for  1898,  entitled  Ueber  Zwei  Definitionem  der  Endlichkeit, 
insists  indeed  that  this  whole  distinction  between  positive  and  negative 
definitions  is,  from  the  point  of  view  of  formal  Logic,  vain,  and  that  Mr. 
Charles  Peirce's  definition  of  finite  systems,  given  in  the  American 
Journal  of  Mathematics,  Vol.  7,  p.  202,  while  it  is  the  polar  opposite  of 
Dedekind's  definition  of  the  Infinite,  is,  logically  speaking,  at  once  equiv- 
alent to  Dedekind's  definition,  and  yet  as  positive  as  the  latter,  although 
Mr.  Peirce,  in  the  passage  in  question,  starts  from  the  finite,  and  not 
from  the  infinite.  Schroeder  seems  to  me  quite  right  in  regarding  the 
distinction  between  essentially  positive  and  essentially  negative  definitions 
as  one  for  which  a  purely  formal  Logic  has  no  place.  But  as  a  fact,  the 
distinction  in  question,  between  what  is  positive  and  what  is  negative,  has 
an  import  wholly  metaphysical.  Our  interest  in  it  here  lies  in  the  fact 
that  if  you  begin,  in  Dedekind's  way,  with  the  positive  concept  of  the 
Infinite,  you  need  not  presuppose  the  "externally  given"  Many,  but 
may  develope  the  multitude  out  of  the  internal  meaning  of  a  single  purpose. 
Mr.  Charles  Peirce,  in  his  parallel  definition  of  finite  systems,  has  first  to 
presuppose  them  as  given  facts  of  experience.  We,  however,  are  seeking 
to  develope  the  Many  out  of  the  One. 


SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY  513 

respondent  systems  of  the  type  here  in  question  are  mere 
Appearance,  they  are,  at  all  events,  Appearance  worthy  of 
study.  A  list  of  a  few  conceptions  that  are  more  or  less 
obviously  of  the  present  type  may  make  us  pause  before  we 
lightly  reject,  as  absurd,  the  offered  definition. 

First,  then,  the  series  of  whole  Numbers,  as  conceived 
objects,  forms  such  a  self-representative  system.  The  same  is 
true  of  all  the  secondary  number-systems  of  higher  arithmetic 
(the  negative  numbers,  the  rational  numbers,  the  irrational 
numbers,  the  totality  of  the  real  numbers,  the  complex  num- 
bers) .  And  all  continuous  and  discrete  mathematical  systems 
of  any  infinite  type  are  similarly  self -representative.  But  the 
mathematical  objects  are  by  no  means  the  most  philosophically 
interesting  of  the  instances  of  our  concept.  For,  next,  we 
have  the  Self,  the  concept  so  elaborately  studied  by  Mr.  Brad- 
ley, and  condemned  by  him  as  Appearance.  And,  indeed,  if 
the  Self  is  anything  final  at  all,  it  is  certainly  in  its  complete 
expression  (although  of  course  not  in  our  own  psychological 
life  from  instant  to  instant)  a  self-representative  system;  and 
its  metaphysical  fate  stands  or  falls  with  the  possibility  of 
such  systems.  Dedekind's  really  very  profound  use  of  meine 
Gedarikenwelt  as  his  typical  instance  of  the  infinite,  also  sug- 
gests the  interesting  relation  between  the  concept  of  the  Self 
and  that  of  the  mere  mathematical  form  called  the  number- 
series,  —  a  relation  to  which  we  shall  soon  return.  Thirdly, 
the  totality  of  Being,  if  conceived  as  in  any  way  defined  or 
characterized,  or  even  as  in  any  way  even  definable  or  charac- 
terizable,  constitutes,  in  the  present  sense,  a  self -representative 
system.  Obvious  it  is  that  our  own  Fourth  Conception  of 
Being  defines  the  Absolute  as  a  self -representative  system. 
And,  furthermore,  despite  his  horror  of  the  infinite,  and  de- 
spite his  rejection  of  the  Self  as  a  final  category,  Mr.  Bradley 
himself  perforce  has  to  describe  his  own  Absolute  as  a  self- 
representative  system  of  our  type,  as  we  soon  shall  see.  And 
if  he  attempted  to  view  it  otherwise,  it  would  not  be  the  Abso- 
lute or  anything  real  at  all.  In  brief,  every  system  of  which 
anybody  can  rationally  assert  anything  is  either  a  self-repre- 

at 


514  SUPPLEMENTARY   ESSAY 

sentative  system,  in  the  sense  here  in  question,  or  else,  being 
but  a  part  of  the  real  world,  it  is  a  more  or  less  arbitrarily 
selected,  or  an  empirically  given  portion  or  constituent  of  such 
a  system,  —  a  portion  whose  reality,  apart  from  that  of  the 
whole  system,  is  unintelligible. 

Far  from  lacking  totality,  then,  in  the  way  in  which  the 
infinite,  or  rather  the  indefinite,  multitude  of  such  accounts 
as  Mr.  Bosanquet's  is  said  to  lack  totality,1  those  genuinely 
self -representative  systems,  whose  images  are  portions  of  their 
own  objects,  are  the  only  ones  which  can  be  said  to  possess 
any  totality  whatever.  It  is  they  alone  that  are  wholly  posi- 
tive in  their  definition.  Finite  systems  are  either  capable  only 
of  negative  definition,  or,  at  all  events,  have  positive  charac- 
ters only  by  virtue  of  their  relation  to  their  inclusive  infinite, 
or,  in  our  present  sense,  self -representative  systems.2  Or, 
again,  as  we  have  already  begun  to  see,  only  the  processes  of 
recurrent  thought  make  explicit  the  true  unity  of  the  One  and 
the  Many.  But  these  very  processes  express  themselves  in 
systems  of  the  type  now  in  question. 

To  make  these  matters  clearer,  it  will  be  necessary  to  con- 
sider each  of  the  just-mentioned  illustrations  more  in  detail. 
First,  then,  as  to  the  simple  case  of  the  number-system,  whose 
logical  genesis  we  for  the  moment  leave  out  of  consideration, 
and  whose  general  constitution  we  assume  as  known.  The 
whole  numbers  first  form  what  Cantor  calls  a  wohl-definirte 
Menge,  —  or  exactly  defined  multitude.  That  is,  you  can  pre- 
cisely distinguish  between  any  conceived  or  presented  object 
that  is  not  a  whole  number  (as,  for  example,  one-half,  or  the 
moral  law,  or  the  odor  of  a  rose),  and  an  object  that  is  a  whole 
number,  abstract  or  concrete  (e.g.  ten,  or  ten  thousand,  or  the 

1  See  Bosanquet's  Logic,  loc.  cit.  et  sq. 

2  Mr.  Charles  Peirce,  as  noted  above,  has  indeed  given  a  perfectly 
positive  and  exact  definition  of  a  finite  system  ;  but  in  order  to  set  that 
definition  to  work  you  have  first  to  suppose  your  Many  externally  given, 
while,  in  order  to  define  the  Gedankenwelt,  or  the  Self,  or,  as  we  shall 
later  see,  the  Real  World,  you  have  only  to  presuppose  a  single,  and  un- 
avoidable, internal  meaning.     The  infinity  then  follows  of  itself. 


SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY  515 

number  of  birds  on  yonder  bough).  Taking  the  whole  num- 
bers as  the  abstract  numbers,  i.e.  as  the  members  of  a  certain 
ideal  series,  arithmetically  defined,  the  mathematician  can, 
therefore,  view  them  all  as  given  by  means  of  their  universal 
definition,  and  their  consequent  clear  distinction  from  all 
other  objects  of  thought.1  Taking  them  thus  as  given,  the 
numbers  become  entities  of  the  type  contemplated  by  our 
Third  Conception  of  Being;  and  as  such  entities  we  can  admit 
them  here  for  the  moment,  not  now  asking  whether  or  no  they 
have,  or  can  win,  a  reality  of  our  Fourth  type. 

Now  the  numbers  form,  in  infinitely  numerous  ways,  a  self- 
representative  system  of  the  type  here  in  question.  That  is, 
as  has  repeatedly  been  remarked,  by  all  the  recent  authors  who 
have  dealt  with  this  aspect  of  the  matter,  the  number-system, 
taken  in  its  conceived  totality,  can  be  put  in  a  one-to-one  cor- 
respondence with  one  of  its  own  constituent  portions  in  any 
one  of  an  endless  number  of  ways.  For  the  numbers,  if  once 
regarded  as  a  given  whole,  form  an  endless  ordered  series, 
having  a,  first  term,  a  second  term,  and  so  on.  But  just  so  the 
even  numbers,  2,  4,  6,  etc.,  form  an  endless  ordered  series, 
having  a,  first,  second,  third  term,  and  so  on.  In  the  same  way, 
too,  the  prime  numbers  form  a  demonstrably  endless  series, 
whereof  there  is  a,  first  member,  a  second  member,  and  so  forth. 
Or,  again,  the  numbers  that  are  perfect  squares,  those  that 
are  perfect  cubes,  and  those,  in  general,  that  are  of  the  form 
an,  where  n  is  any  one  whole  number,  while  a  takes  succes- 
sively the  value  of  every  whole  number,  —  all  such  derived 
systems  of  whole  numbers,  form  similarly  ordered  series, 
wherein  each  member  of  each  system  has  its  determined  place 
as  first,  second,  third,  or  later  member  of  its  own  system, 
while  the  system  forms  a  series  without  end.  Take,  then,  any 

1  How  they  are  to  be  defined  is  of  course  itself  a  significant  logical 
problem,  whereof  we  shall  soon  hear  more.  Cantor's  account  of  the  well- 
defined  multitude,  Menge,  or  ensemble,  is  found  in  French  translation  in 
the  Acta  Mathematica,  torn.  II,  p.  363.  On  the  general  sense  in  which 
any  multitude  can  be  viewed  as  given  for  purposes  of  mathematical  dis- 
cussion, see  Borel's  Lemons  (cited  above),  p.  2. 


516  SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY 

whole  number  r,  however  large.  Then,  in  the  ideal  class  oi 
objects  called  whole  numbers,  there  is  a  determinate  even 
number  which  occupies  the  rth  place  in  the  series  of  even 
numbers,  when  the  latter  are  arranged  according  to  their  sizes, 
beginning  with  2.  There  is  equally  a  prime  number,  occupy- 
ing the  rth  place  in  a  similarly  ordered  series  of  primes;  and 
a  square  number  occupying  the  rth  place  in  a  similarly  ordered 
series  of  square  numbers ;  and  a  cube  occupying  the  ?-th  place 
in  a  like  arrangement  of  cubes;  and  an  rth  member  in  any 
particular  series  of  numbers  of  the  form  a",  where  n  is  any  de- 
terminate whole  number,  and  a  is  taken,  in  succession,  as  1, 
2,  3,  etc.  As  all  these  things  hold  true  for  any  r,  however 
large,  we  can  say,  in  general,  that  every  whole  number  r  has 
its  correspondent  rth  member  in  any  of  the  supposed  series 
of  systematically  selected  whole  numbers,  —  even  numbers, 
primes,  square  numbers,  cubes,  or  what  you  will.  But  these 
various  selected  systems  are  such  that  each  of  them  forms  only 
a  portion  of  the  entire  series  of  whole  numbers.  So  that  the 
whole  series,  taken  as  given,  is  in  infinitely  numerous  ways 
capable  of  being  put  in  a  one-to-one  relation  to  one  of  its  own 
constituent  parts. 

I  doubt  not  that  this  very  fact  might  appear,  at  first  blush, 
to  bring  out  a  manifest  "contradiction"  in  the  very  con- 
ception of  the  "  totality "  of  the  whole  numbers  taken  as 
"given."  But  closer  examination  will  show,  as  Couturat, 
Cantor,  and  the  other  authors  here  concerned  (since  Bolzano) 
have  repeatedly  pointed  out,  that  the  "  contradiction  "  in  ques- 
tion is  really  a  contradiction  only  of  the  well-known  nature  of 
any  finite  collection.  It  was  of  such  collections  that  the 
axiom,  "  The  whole  is  greater  than  the  part, "  was  first  asserted. 
And  of  such  collections  alone  is  it  with  absolute  generality  true. 
Take  any  finite  collection  of  whole  numbers,  however  large; 
and  then  indeed  the  assertion  of  any  of  the  foregoing  one-to-one 
correspondences  of  the  whole,  with  a  mere  part  of  itself,  breaks 
down.  But  let  us  once  see  that  taking  any  number  r,  however 
large,  we  can  find  the  corresponding  rth  member  in  any  of  the 
ordered  series  of  primes,  squares,  etc.,  and  then  we  shall  also 


SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY  617 

see  that  the  absolutely  universal  proposition,  "  Every  whole 
has  its  single  and  separate  correspondent  member  in  any  one 
of  the  various  ordered  series  of  selected  whole  numbers 
aforesaid,"  is  not  only  free  from  contradiction,  but  is 
easily  demonstrable,  and  is  a  mere  expression  of  the  actual 
nature  of  the  number-series,  taken  as  an  object  of  exact 
thought. 

Highly  important  it  is,  however,  to  observe,  that  the  prop- 
erty of  the  number-series  here  in  question  is  most  sharply 
conceived,  not  when  one  wearily  tries,  as  Mr.  Bosanquet  has 
it,  to  count "  without  having  anything  in  particular  to  count,"  1 
but  when  one  rather  tries  to  reflect,  and  then  observes  that  the 
single  feature  about  the  number-system  upon  which  all  this 
conceivable  complexity  depends,  is  the  simple  and  positive 
demand  that  is  determined  by  the  thought  which  conceives  any 
order  whatever.  For  order,  as  we  shall  soon  more  generally 
see,  is  comprehensible  most  of  all  in  cases  of  self -representa- 
tive systems  of  the  present  type.  The  numbers  are  simply  a 
formally  ordered  collection  of  ideal  objects.  Whoever  any- 
where orders  his  own  thoughts,  either  defines  just  such  a  self- 
representative  system,  or  sets  in  order  some  empirically 
selected  portion  of  a  world  that,  in  its  totality,  is  such  a  sys- 
tem. And  any  system  once  self -representative,  in  this  par- 
ticular way,  is  infinitely  self -representative.  And  if  you  will 
count  its  elements,  you  shall,  then,  always  find  that  you  can 
never  finish  the  task. 

Yet  we  are  not  yet  done  with  showing,  in  this  abstractly 
simple  case  of  the  numbers,  what  this  type  of  self -representa- 
tion implies.  The  numbers,  namely,  form  a  system  not  only 
self -representative  in  infinitely  numerous  ways,  but  also  self- 
representative  according  to  each  of  these  ways,  in  a  manner 
that  can  be  doubly  brought  under  our  notice.  Take,  namely, 
the  collection  of  series  thus  represented :  — 

1  Logic,  Vol.  I,  p.  175.  In  the  Theory  of  Numbers,  the  properties 
of  the  whole  numbers  are  indeed  interesting  for  themselves  "  without  any- 
thing in  particular  to  count,"  just  because  they  form  an  ordered  series, 
whose  properties  are  the  properties  of  all  ordered  systems. 


518  SUPPLEMENTARY   ESSAY 

1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10,  etc. 

2  4  6  8  10  12  14  16  18  20,  etc. 
4  8  12  16  20  24  28  32  36  40,  etc. 
8  16  24  32  40  48  56  64  72  80,  etc. 

Each  of  these  series,  written  in  the  horizontal  rows,  is 
ordered.  Each  is  in  such  wise  endless  that  to  every  number 
r,  however  large,  there  corresponds  a  determinate  rth  member 
of  that  particular  series.  And  so  each  series  illustrates  the 
first  point,  namely,  that  the  whole  number-series  may  be  put 
in  a  one-to-one  correspondence  with  a  part  of  itself.  But  each 
series  is  formed  from  the  immediately  preceding  series  by 
writing  down,  in  order,  the  second,  fourth,  sixth,  eighth 
member  of  that  series,  and  so  forth,  as  respectively  the  first, 
second,  third,  fourth  member  of  the  new  series,  and  by  pro- 
ceeding, according  to  the  same  law,  indefinitely.  It  is  at  once 
easy  to  illustrate  a  second  principle  regarding  any  such  self- 
representative  systems.  To  do  this,  let  us  observe  that:  — 

First,  Each  new  series  is  contained  in  the  previous  series  as 
one  of  its  constituent  parts,  so  that  each  horizontal  series  is 
self -representative ;  while  every  one  is  a  part  of  all  of  its 
predecessors. 

Secondly,  Each  series  is  therefore  to  be  derived  from  the 
former  series  in  the  same  way  in  which  the  second  series  is 
derived  from  the  first  series. 

Thirdly,  The  later  series,  therefore,  bear  to  the  earlier  series, 
a  relation  parallel  to  that  which  characterized  the  members  of 
the  series  of  maps  in  our  first  illustration  of  the  present  type 
of  self-representative  systems. 

For  just  as,  in  the  former  case,  the  one  purpose  to  draw  the 
exact  map  of  England  within  England,  gave  rise  to  the  end- 
less series  of  maps  within  maps,  just  so,  the  one  purpose,  To 
represent  the  whole  number-series  (as  to  the  order  of  its  con- 
stituents) by  a  specially  selected  series  of  whole  numbers, 
arranged  in  order  as  first,  second,  etc,  —  just  so,  I  say,  this 
one  purpose  involves  of  necessity  the  result  that  this  second 
or  representative  series  shall  contain,  as  part  of  itself,  an  end- 


SUPPLEMENTARY   ESSAY  519 

less  series  of  parts  within  parts.  Each  of  these  contained  J 
parts  represents  a  preceding  part  precisely  in  the  way  in  which 
the  first  representative  system  represents  the  original  system. 
The  law  of  the  process  always  is  that  in  a  self-representative 
system  of  the  type  here  in  question,  if  any  part  A1  can  stand 
in  a  one-to-one  relation  to  the  elements  of  the  whole  system, 
A,  then  ipso  facto  there  exists  A"  (a  part  of  this  part),  such 
that  A"  is  the  image  or  representative  in  A',  of  A'  as  it  was 
in  A.  A"  stands,  then,  in  the  same  relation  to  A',  as  that  in 
which  A'  stands  to  A;  and  A"  is  also  a  part  of  A.  To  derive 
A'  from  A,  by  any  such  process  as  the  one  just  exemplified,  is 
therefore  at  once  to  define,  by  recurrence,  the  derivation  of  A" 
from  A',  or,  if  you  please,  the  internal  and  representative 
presence  of  A"  within  A',  of  A'"  within  A",  and  so  on  without 
end.  Nor  can  any  A'  be  derived  from  A,  in  such  wise  as 
exactly  to  represent,  while  a  part  of  A,  the  whole  of  A,  with- 
out the  consequent  implied  definition  of  the  whole  series,  also 
endless,  A,  A',  A",  A"',  wherein  each  term  is  a  representative 
of  the  former  term.  So  that  not  only  is  A  self -representative 
and  endless,  but  each  of  the  derived  series  is  self -representa- 
tive and  endless,  while  the  whole  ordered  system  of  series 
that  one  can  write  in  the  orderly  sequence  A,  A',  A",  A"'  is 
again  a  self -representative  sequence,  and  so  on  endlessly,  — 
all  this  complexity  resulting  self-evidently  from  the  expres- 
sions of  a  single  purpose. 

One  sees,  —  self -representation  of  the  present  type  remains 
persistently  true  to  its  tendency  to  develope  types  of  variety 
out  of  unity.  Trivial  these  types  may  indeed  seem;  yet 
the  simplicity  and  the  exactness  of  the  derivation  here  in 
question  will  soon  prove  of  use  to  us  in  a  wholly  different  field. 
But  it  is  now  time  to  suggest,  briefly,  a  still  more  general  view 
of  these  self-representative  systems. 

IV.    Remarks  upon  the  Various  Types  of  Self -Representative 

Systems 

We  have  so  far  spoken,  repeatedly,  of  the  "  present  type " 
of  self -representative  systems,  meaning  the  type  that,  in  this 


520  SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY 

paper,  will  especially  interest  us.  In  this  type  a  system  is 
capable  of  standing  in  an  exact  one-to-one  correspondence  witfL 
one  of  its  own  constituent  portions.  We  are  to  be  interested 
throughout  this  paper  in  cases  of  self -representation,  such  as 
Self-consciousness,  and  the  relation  between  thought  and 
Reality,  and  all  the  problems  of  Reflection,  bring  to  our 
notice.  And  in  all  these  cases,  as  we  shall  see,  the  system 
before  us  will  combine  the  characters  of  selfhood  and  internal 
unity  of  nature,  with  the  character  of  being  also  internally 
manifold,  self-dirempted,  Other  than  Self,  and  that  in  most 
complex  and  highly  antithetic  fashion.  The  relational  sys- 
tems of  the  type  of  the  number-system  especially  exemplify 
—  of  course  in  a  highly  abstract  fashion  —  the  sort  of  unity 
in  contrast,  and  of  exact  self -representation,  which  we  are  to 
learn  to  comprehend.  Hence,  the  stress  here  to  be  laid  upon 
one  type  of  self-representative  system. 

Yet,  mathematically  regarded,  this  is  indeed  only  one  of 
several  possible  types  of  self-representation. 

In  the  work  by  Dedekind  already  cited,  the  general  name, 
Kette,  is  given  to  any  self -representative  system,  whether  of 
the  present  type  or  any  other  self-representative  type.  In  the 
most  general  terms,  a  Kette  is  formed  when  a  system  is  made 
to  correspond,  whether  exactly,  and  element  for  element,  or 
in  any  other  way,  either  to  the  whole,  or  to  a  part  of  itself. 
The  correspondence  might  be  summary  and  inexact  in  type,  if 
to  many  elements  of  the  original  system  a  single  element  of 
the  representation  or  image  were  made  to  correspond,  as,  in  a 
summary  account  or  diagram,  a  single  item  or  stroke  can  be 
made,  at  pleasure,  to  correspond  to  a  whole  series  of  facts  in 
the  original  object  which  the  account  or  the  diagram  repre- 
sents. In  this  way,  for  instance,  the  one  word  prime  can  be 
made  to  correspond,  in  a  given  discussion,  to  all  the  prime 
numbers.  If,  in  case  of  a  Kette,  the  correspondence  of  the 
whole  to  the  part  is  of  this  inexact  type,  the  Kette  need  not  be 
endless,  but  may  even  consist  of  the  original  object,  and  a 
single  one  of  its  constituent  parts.  Then  all  the  later  mem- 
bers of  the  Kette,  the  A",  the  A'",  etc.,  of  the  previous  account, 


SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY  521 

fuse  together  in  this  one  part,  A'.  If  the  map  of  England, 
before  discussed,  be  an  inexact  and  summary  map,  such  as  we 
actually  always  make,  it  need  contain  no  part  that  visibly,  or 
exactly,  presents  the  place  or  the  form  of  the  map  itself,  as  a 
part  of  the  surface  of  England.  But  the  Kette  is  constructed 
in  such  wise  that  the  part  is  in  exact  correspondence  to  the 
whole  when,  as  in  Dedekind's  definition  of  the  Infinite,  the 
correspondence  is  dhnlich,  so  that  any  different  elements  in 
the  object  have  different  elements  corresponding  to  them  in 
the  image,  while  every  element  has  its  own  uniquely  deter- 
mined corresponding  image.  It  will  be  observed  that  in  case 
of  inexact  or  dissimilar  self-representation,  we  have  a  failure 
or  external  limitation  of  our  self-representative  purpose. 
Only  exact  self-representation  is  free  from  such  external  inter- 
ference. 

Yet  even  an  exact  self-correspondence  can  be  brought  to 
pass,  within  a  system,  by  making  it  correspond  not  to  a  true 
portion  of  itself,  but,  member  for  member,  to  the  whole  of  itself. 
Thus  the  system  abed,  consisting  of  the  already  distinguish- 
able elements  a,  6,  etc.,  may  be  put  in  exact  correspondence  to 
itself  by  making  b  correspond  to  a,  and  so  represent  a,  while, 
in  similar  fashion,  c  corresponds  to  6,  d  to  c,  and,  finally,  a 
itself  to  d.  In  this  case  the  system  is,  in  a  particular  way, 
"transformed"  into  the  image  bcda,  in  such  wise  as  to  be 
exactly  self -representative.  But  the  system  abed  might  also 
be  represented,  element  for  element,  by  the  system  cbda,  where 
the  order  of  the  elements  was  again  different,  but  where  c  now 
corresponded  to  the  original  a,  b  to  itself,  d  to  c,  and  a  to  d. 
Such  "substitutions,"  as  they  are  called,  give  rise  to  self- 
representative  systems  of  a  type  different  from  the  one  that  we 
have  heretofore  had  in  mind.  But  in  the  general  mathemati- 
cal theory  of  "  transformations,"  and  of  "  groups  of  operations," 
self -representation  of  such  types  plays  a  great  part.  And  in 
cases  of  such  a  type,  to  be  sure,  exact  self-representation,  and 
finitude  of  the  system,  are  capable  of  perfect  combination 
Such  self-representations  need  not  be  endless,  and  can  be 
exact.  There  are  many  remarkable  instances  known  to 


522  SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY 

descriptive  physical  science,  where  the  correspondence  use& 
for  scientific  purposes  is  of  this  type.  Such  are  the  instances 
which  occur  in  crystallography,  where  the  symmetry  of  a  physi- 
cal object  is  studied  by  considering  what  group  of  rotations,  or 
of  internal  reflections  in  one  or  in  another  plane,  or  of  both 
combined,  will  bring  any  ideal  crystal  form  to  congruence  with 
itself.  All  such  operations  as  the  rotations  and  reflections 
that  leave  the  crystal  form  unaltered  are,  of  course,  opera- 
tions which  bring  to  light  an  essentially  self-representative 
character  in  the  crystal  form,  since  by  any  one  such  opera- 
tion the  crystal  form  is  made  precisely  to  correspond  with 
itself,  while  the  operation  can  at  once  be  followed  by  a  new 
operation  of  the  same  type,  which,  again,  leaves  the  form 
unaltered. 

While,  however,  self -representative  systems  of  ideal  or  of 
physical  objects  belonging  to  the  later  types  play  a  great  part 
in  exact  physical  and  in  mathematical  science,  their  study 
does  not  throw  light  upon  the  primal  way  in  which  the  One 
and  the  Many,  in  the  processes  directly  open  to  thought's 
own  internal  observation,  are  genetically  combined.  For 
physical  systems  which  permit  these  transformations  of  a 
whole  into  an  exact  image  of  itself  are  given  as  external 
"conjunctions,"  such  as  crystal  forms.  We  do  not  see  them 
made.  We  find  them.  The  ideal  cases  of  the  same  type  in 
pure  mathematics  have  also  a  similar  defect  from  the  point 
of  view  of  Bradley 's  criticism.  A  system  that  is  to  be  made 
self -representative  through  a  "  group  of  substitutions, "  shows, 
therefore,  the  same  diversities  after  we  have  operated  upon 
it  as  before;  and,  furthermore,  that  congruence  with  itself 
which  the  system  shows  at  the  end  of  a  self-representative 
operation  of  any  type  wherein  all  elements  take  the  place  of 
all,  is  not  similar  to  what  happens  where,  in  our  dealings  with 
the  universe,  Thought  and  Reality,  the  Idea  and  its  Other, 
Self  and  Not-Self,  are  brought  into  self-evident  relations,  and 
are  at  once  contrasted  with  one  another  and  unified  in  a  single 
whole.  Hence,  we  shall  indeed  continue  to  insist,  in  what 
follows,  upon  those  self-representations  wherein  proper  part 


SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY  523 

and  whole  meet,  and  become  in  some  wise  precisely  congruent, 
element  for  element.1  We  mention  the  other  types  of  self- 
representation  only  to  eliminate  them  from  the  present 
discourse. 

In  case  of  these  self-representative  systems,  of  the  type 
especially  interesting  to  us,  we  have  already  illustrated  how 
their  particular  kind  of  self -representation  developes  infinite 
variety  out  of  unity  in  a  peculiarly  impressive  way.  The 
general  law  of  the  process  in  question  may  now  be  stated,  in 
a  still  more  precise  and  technical  form. 

We  may  once  more  use  the  thoroughly  typical  case  of  the 
number-system.  We  have  seen,  in  general,  the  positive 
nature  of  its  endlessness.  We  want  now  to  define,  in  decid- 
edly general  terms,  the  infinite  process  whereby  the  numbers 
can  be  self-represented,  in  infinitely  numerous  ways,  by  a  part 
of  themselves,  and  to  state,  abstractly,  the  implications  of  any 
such  process.  Let,  then,  f(n)  represent  any  "  function  "  of  a 
whole  number,  such  that  n  is  to  take,  successively,  the  value 
of  any  whole  number  from  1  onwards ;  while  f(ri)  itself  is,  in 
value,  always  a  determinate  whole  number.  The  values  of  /(?i) 
shall  never  be  repeated.  They  shall  follow  in  endless  succes- 
sion, and,  as  we  shall  also  here  suppose,  in  the  order  of  their 
magnitude  from  less  to  more.  Not  all  the  numbers  shall  ap- 
pear amongst  the  values  of  f(n).  In  consequence,  /(w),  by 
means  of  its  first,  second,  third  values,  etc.,  shall  represent 
precisely  the  whole  of  the  number-series,  while  forming  only 
a  part  thereof.  Otherwise  let  f(n)  be  an  arbitrary  function. 
Then  it  will  always  be  true  that  f  (n)  will  contain,  as  a  part  of  it- 
self, a  series  fi(n),  related  to  f(n)  in  precisely  the  same  way  in 
^vhich  f  (n)  is  related  to  the  original  series  of  whole  numbers.  It 

1  Upon  the  various  types  of  Ketten,  finite  and  infinite,  "cyclical"  and 
"open,"  see  the  very  minute  analysis  given  by  Bettazzi,  in  his  papers 
entitled  Sulla  Catena  di  un  Ente  in  tin  gruppo,  and  Gruppi  finiti  ed  infiniti 
di  Enti,  in  the  AM  of  the  Turin  Academy  of  Sciences  (for  1895-96), 
Vol.  31,  pp.  447  and  506.  Bettazzi,  in  the  second  of  these  papers, 
expresses  some  dissatisfaction  with  Dedekind's  definition  of  the  Infinite, 
but  withdraws  his  objections  in  a  later  paper,  Atti,  Vol.  32,  p.  353. 


524  SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY 

will  also  be  true  that  /i(n)  will  contain  a  second  series  fa(n)t 
similarly  related  to  /I(M);  and  so  on  without  end. 

We  have  illustrated  this  truth.  We  now  need  to  devel- 
ope  it  for  any  and  every  series  of  f(ri),  however  arbitrary. 
Consider,  then,  the  values  of  f(n)  as  a  part  of  the  original 
number-series.  These  values  of  f(n)  form  an  image  or  repre- 
sentative of  the  whole  number-series  in  such  wise  that  if  r  be 
a  whole  number  appropriately  chosen,  some  one  value  of /(n), 
say  the  value  that  corresponds  to  the  number  p  in  the  original 
series,  or,  in  other  words,  the  jpth  value  of  /(n),  is  r.  But 
since  f(ri)  images  the  whole  of  the  original  number-series,  it 
must  contain,  as  a  part  of  itself,  a  representation  of  its  own 
self  as  it  is  in  that  number-series.  In  this  representation, 
fi(ri),  there  is  again  a  first  member,  a  second  member,  and  so 
on. 

Now  we  can  indeed  speak  of  the  series  f^ri)  as  "derived 
from  "  f(n)  by  a  second  and  relatively  new  operation.  But, 
as  a  fact,  the  very  operation  which  defines  the  series  /(n) 
already  predetermines  /I(M),  and  no  really  second,  or  new 
operation  is  needed.  For  if  every  whole  number  has  its  cor- 
respondent, or  "image,"  in  f(n),  then,  for  that  very  reason, 
every  separate  "image,"  being,  by  hypothesis,  a  whole  num- 
ber, has  again,  in/(w),  its  own  image;  and  this  image  again 
its  own  image,  and  so  on  without  end.  Merely  to  observe 
these  images  of  images,  already  present  in  /(n),  is  to  observe, 
in  succession,  the  various  members  of  the  series  fi(n).  The 
law  of  the  formation  of  /i(n)  is  already  determined,  then, 
when  /(n)  is  written,  no  matter  how  arbitrary  f(ri)  itself 
may  be. 

In  particular,  let  p  be  any  whole  number,  and  suppose  that, 
according  to  the  original  self -representation  of  the  numbers, 
f(p)  =  r.  Then  r  also  will  have  its  image  in  the  series  f(n). 
Let  that  image  be  called /(r).  Then/(r)  =  /(/(p)),  is  at  once 
defined  as  fi(p),  that  is,  as  that  value  which  fi(n)  takes  when 
n  =  p,  or  as  the  image  of  the  image  of  p.  It  is  easy  to  see 
that  fi(p~)  is  the  pth  value,  in  serial  order,  of  the  series  fi(n) . 
At  the  same  time,  since  fi(p)  =f(r),  and  since  f(r)  occupies, 


SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY  525 

in  the  series  of  ^  values  of  fin)  the  rth  place,  while  f(p),  or  r, 
occupies  the  rth  place  in  the  original  number-series,  one  can 
say,  in  general,  that  the  successive  values  of  /i(n)  are  num- 
bers which  occupy  in  /(n)  places  precisely  corresponding  to 
the  places  which  the  successive  values  of  /(?i)  themselves 
occupy  in  the  original  number-series.  Thus  the  first  member 
of  fi(n)  is  that  one  amongst  the  members  of  the  series  of  values 
of /(n)  whose  place  in  that  series  of  values  corresponds  to  the 
place  in  the  original  series  of  whole  numbers  which  was  occu- 
pied by /(.?).  The  second  member  of  yi(n)  is,  even  so,  that 
one  amongst  the  series  of  values  of  f(n)  which  occupies  the 
place  in  that  series  of  values  which  f(2)  occupies  in  the  origi- 
nal number-series.  And,  in  general,  if,  to  the  whole  number 
p,  in  the  original  number-series,  there  corresponded  the  num- 
ber r,  as  the  image  of  that  number  in  the  series  called  f(ri), 
then  this  pih  member  of  the  series  called  f(ri)  will  have,  as  its 
image  or  representative  in/^i),  the  number /(r),  i.e.  the  value 
of  f(n)  when  n  =  r.  This  number  /(r)  will  constitute,  of 
course,  thepth  member  of  f\(n),  and  will  occupy,  in  the  series 
called  f(n),  the  very  same  relative  place  which  f(p)  occupies 
in  the  original  number-series. 

Precisely  so,  f^ri)  contains,  as  a  part  of  itself,  its  own  image 
as  it  is  in/(w)  and  also  as  it  is  in  the  original  series.  And 
this  new  image  may  be  called  /2(w);  and  so  on  without  end.1 
Hence,  one  process  of  self -representation  inevitably  determines 
an  endless  Kette  altogether  parallel  to  our  series  of  maps 
within  maps  of  England.  The  general  structure  and  develop- 
ment of  any  self-representative  system  of  the  present  type 
have  now  been  not  only  illustrated,  but  precisely  defined  and 
developed.  Self-representation,  of  the  type  here  in  ques- 
tion, creates,  at  one  stroke,  an  infinite  chain  of  self -represen- 
tations within  self-representations. 

1  On  the  properties  of  a  Kette,  see  further  in  addition  to  Dedekind, 
Schroeder,  in  the  latter's  Algebra  der  Relative,  in  the  3d  Vol.  of  his 
Logik,  pp.  346-404.  Compare  Borel,  op.  tit.,  pp.  104-106. 


526  SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY 

V.    The  Self  and  the  Relational  System  of  the  Ordinal  Num- 
bers.    The  Origin  of  Number;  and  the  Meaning  of  Order 

Having  considered  self-representation  so  much  in  the  ab- 
stract, we  may  now  approach  nearer  to  the  other  illustrations 
of  self-representative  relational  systems.  To  be  sure,  in 
beginning  to  do  so,  we  shall,  for  the  first  time  in  this  discus- 
sion, be  able  to  state  the  precise  logical  source  of  the  good 
order  of  the  number-system,  whose  self -representative  charac- 
ter, now  so  wearisomely  illustrated,  is  simply  due  to  the  fact 
that  the  number-series  is  a  purely  abstract  image,  a  bare,  dried 
skeleton,  as  it  were,  of  the  relational  system  that  must  char- 
acterize an  ideally  completed  Self.  This  observation,  in  the 
present  form,  cannot  be  said  to  be  due  to  Hegel,  although  both 
his  analysis  and  Fichte's  account  of  the  Self,  imply  a  theory 
that  apparently  needs  to  be  developed  into  this  more  modern 
form.  But  the  contempt  of  the  older  Idealism  for  the  careful 
analysis  of  mathematical  forms,  —  its  characteristic  unwilling- 
ness to  dwell  upon  the  dry  detail  of  the  seemingly  lifeless 
realm  of  the  mathematically  pure  abstractions,  is  responsible 
for  much  of  the  imperfect  development  and  relative  vagueness 
of  the  idealistic  Absolute.  It  is  so  easy  for  the  philosopher 
to  put  on  superior  airs  when  he  draws  near  to  the  realm  of  the 
mathematician.  And  Hegel,  despite  his  laborious  study  of 
the  conceptions  of  the  Calculus,  in  his  Logik,  generally  does 
so.  The  mathematician,  one  observes,  is  a  mere  "computer." 
His  barren  Cakul,  — •  what  can  it  do  for  the  deeper  comprehen- 
sion of  truth?  Truth  is  concrete.  As  a  fact,  however,  these 
superior  airs  are  usually  the  expression  of  an  unwillingness 
even  to  spend  as  much  time  as  one  ought  to  spend  over  mathe- 
matical reading.  And  Hegel  seems  not  to  have  solved  the 
problem  of  the  logic  of  mathematics.  The  truth  is  indeed 
concrete.  But  if  alle  Theorie  is,  after  all,  grau,  and  griin  des 
Lebens  Goldener  Baum,  the  philosopher,  as  himself  a  thinker, 
merely  shares  with  his  colleague,  the  mathematician,  the  fate 
of  having  to  deal  with  dead  leaves  and  sections  torn  or  cut 
from  the  tree  of  life,  in  his  toilsome  effort  to  make  out  what 


SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY  527 

the  life  is.  The  mathematician's  interests  are  not  the  philoso- 
pher's. But  neither  of  the  two  has  a  monopoly  of  the  abstrac- 
tions ;  and  in  the  end  each  of  them  —  and  certainly  the 
philosopher  —  can  learn  from  the  other.  The  metaphysic  of 
the  future  will  take  fresh  account  of  mathematical  research. 

The  foregoing  observation  as  to  the  parallelism  between  the 
structure  of  the  number-series  and  the  bare  skeleton  of  the 
ideal  Self,  is  due,  then,  in  its  present  form,  rather  to  Dede- 
kind  than  to  the  idealistic  philosophers  proper.1  It  shall  be 
briefly  expounded  in  the  form  in  which  he  has  suggested  it  to 
me,  although  his  discussion  seems  to  have  been  written  wholly 
without  regard  to  any  general  philosophical  consequences. 
And  the  present  is  the  first  attempt,  so  far  as  I  know,  to 
bring  Dedekind's  research  into  its  proper  relation  to  general 
metaphysical  inquiry. 

The  numbers  have  been  so  far  taken  as  we  find  them.  But 
how  do  we  men  come  by  our  number-series?  The  usual  answer 
is,  by  learning  to  count  external  objects.  We  see  collections 
of  objects,  with  distinguishable  units, — the  "bare  conjunc- 
tions "  of  Mr.  Bradley  once  more.  Their  mysterious  unity  in 
diversity  arouses  our  curiosity.  We  form  the  habit,  however, 

1  Hegel  indeed  defines  the  positive  Infinite  as  das  Fursichseiende,  and 
sets  it  in  opposition  to  the  merely  negative  Infinitive,  or  das  Schlecht- 
Unendliche.  See  the  well-known  discussion  in  the  Logik,  Werke,  2te 
Auflage,  Bd.  Ill,  p.  148,  sqq.  Dr.  W.  T.  Harris,  in  his  Hegel  (Chicago,  1890), 
and  in  other  discussions,  has  ably  defended  and  illustrated  the  Hegelian 
statements.  They  are  applied  to  the  problem  of  the  quantitative  Infinite 
by  Hegel  in  the  Logik,  in  the  volume  cited,  p.  272  sqq.  But  near  as  Hegel 
thus  comes  to  the  full  definition  of  the  Infinite,  his  statement  of  the 
matter  remains  rather  a  postulate  that  the  self-representative  system  shall 
be  found,  than  a  demonstration  and  exact  explanation  of  its  reality. 
The  well-known  Hegelian  assertions  that  the  only  true  image  of  the 
Infinite  is  the  closed  cycle  (Logik,  loc.  cit.,  p.  156),  that  the  quantitative 
infinite  is  a  return  to  quality  (loc.  cit.,  p.  271),  and  that  the  rational  frac- 
tion, taken  as  the  equivalent  of  the  endless  decimal,  is  the  one  typical 
example  of  the  completed  quantitatively  infinite  process,  —  these,  all 
of  them  valuable  as  emphasizing  various  aspects  of  the  concept  of  the 
infinite,  appear  in  the  present  day  wholly  inadequate  to  the  complexity 
of  our  problem,  and  rather  hinder  than  aid  its  final  expression. 


528  SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY 

of  using  certain  familiar  and  easily  observed  collections  (oui 
fingers,  for  instance)  as  means  for  defining  the  nature  of  less 
familiar  and  more  complex  collections.  The  number-names, 
derived  from  these  elementary  processes  of  finger-counting, 
come  to  our  aid  in  the  further  development  of  our  thought 
about  numbers.  The  decadic  system  makes  possible,  through 
a  simple  system  of  notation,  the  expression  of  numbers  of  any 
magnitude.  And  so  the  number-concept  in  its  generality  is 
born. 

This  usual  summary  view  of  the  origin  of  the  numbers  has 
its  obvious  measure  of  historical  and  psychological  truth.  It 
leaves  wholly  unanswered,  however,  the  most  interesting  prob- 
lems as  to  the  nature  of  the  number-concept.  For  numbers 
have  two  characters.  They  are  cardinal  numbers,  in  so  far  as 
they  give  us  an  idea  of  how  many  constituents  a  given  collec- 
tion of  objects  contains.  But  they  have  also  an  ordinal  char- 
acter; for  by  using  numbers,  as  the  makers  of  watches,  and 
bicycles,  or  as  the  printers  of  a  series  of  banknotes,  or  of 
tickets,  use  them,  we  can  give  to  any  one  object  its  place  in  a 
determinate  series,  as  the  first,  the  tenth,  or  the  ten  thou- 
sandth member  of  that  series.  Such  ordinal  use  of  numbers 
is  a  familiar  device  for  identifying  objects  that,  for  any  reason, 
we  wish  to  view  as  individuals.  Now,  a  very  little  considera- 
tion shows  that  the  ordinal  value  of  the  numbers  is  of  very 
fundamental  importance  for  their  use  in  giving  us  a  notion  of 
the  cardinal  numbers  of  multitudes  of  objects.  For  when  we 
count  objects  by  using  either  the  fingers  or  the  number-names, 
we  always  employ  an  already  familiar  ordered  series  of  objects 
as  the  basis  of  our  work.  We  put  the  members  of  this  series 
in  a  "  one-to-one  "  relation  to  the  members  of  the  collection  of 
objects  which  we  wish  to  count.  We  deal  out  our  numbers, 
so  to  speak,  in  serial  order,  to  the  various  objects  to  be  counted. 
We  thereby  label  the  various  objects  as  they  are  numbered, 
just  as  the  makers  of  the  banknotes  stamp  an  ordinal  number 
on  each  note  of  a  given  issue.  Only  when  this  process  is  com- 
pleted do  we  recognize  the  cardinal  number  which  tells  us  how 
many  objects  there  are  in  the  collection  of  the  objects  counted. 


SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY  529 

And  we  recognize  this  result  of  counting  by  the  simple  device 
of  giving  to  the  whole  collection  counted  a  cardinal  number 
corresponding  to  the  last  member  of  the  ordinal  number- series 
that  we  have  thus  dealt  out.  If,  for  instance,  the  last  object 
labelled  is  the  tenth  in  the  series  of  objects  set  in  order  by  the 
ordinal  process  of  labelling,  then  the  counted  collection  is  said 
to  contain  ten  objects. 

Unless  the  numbers  were,  then,  in  our  minds,  already  some- 
how a  well-ordered  series,  they  would  help  us  no  whit  in 
counting  objects.  Nor  does  counting  consist  in  the  mere  col- 
lection of  acts  of  synthesis  by  which  we  each  time  add  one 
more,  in  mind,  to  the  collection  of  objects  so  far  counted. 
For  these  acts  of  synthesis,  however  carefully  performed,  soon 
give  us,  if  left  to  themselves,  only  the  confused  sense,  "  There 
is  another  object, — and  another, — and  another."  In  such 
cases  we  soon  "lose  count."  We  can  "keep  tally"  of  our 
objects  only  if  we  combine  the  successive  series  of  acts  of 
observing  another,  and  yet  another,  object,  in  our  collection 
of  objects  with  the  constant  use  of  the  already  ordered 
series  of  number-names,  whose  value  depends  upon  the  fact 
that  one  of  them  comes  first,  another  second,  etc.,  and  that  we 
well  know  what  this  order  means. 

The  ordinal  character  of  the  number-series  is  therefore  its 
most  important  and  fundamental  character.  But  upon  what 
mental  process  does  the  conception  of  any  well-ordered  series 
depend?  The  account  of  the  origin  of  the  number-series  by 
the  mere  use  of  fingers  or  of  names,  does  not  yet  tell  us  what 
we  mean  by  any  ordered  series  at  all. 

To  this  question,  whose  central  significance,  for  the  whole 
understanding  of  the  number-concept,  all  the  later  discussions 
and  the  modern  text-books  recognize,  various  answers  have 
been  given.1  The  order  of  a  series  of  objects,  presented  or 

1  Couturat,  in  the  work  cited,  gives  an  admirable  summary  of  the 
present  phases  of  the  discussion  ;  only  that  he  fails,  I  think,  to  appreciate 
the  importance  and  originality  of  Dedekind's  method  of  deducing  the 
ordinal  concept.  The  views  of  Helmholtz  and  Kronecker  are  discussed 
with  especial  care  by  Couturat.  Veronese,  in  the  introduction  to  his 

2M 


530  SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY 

conceived,  has  been  most  frequently  regarded,  in  the  later  dis- 
cussions, either  as  a  datum  of  sensuous  experience,  or  else  as 
an  inexplicable  and  fundamental  character  of  our  process  of 
conception.  In  either  case  the  problem  of  the  One  and  the 
Many  is  left  unaualyzed.  For  an  ordered  series  is  a  collection 
taken  not  only  as  One,  but  as  a  very  special  sort  of  unity, 
namely,  as  just  this  Order.  That  many  things  can  be  taken 
by  us  as  in  an  ordered  series,  — this  is  true,  but  is  once  more 
the  "bare  conjunction"  of  Mr.  Bradley's  discussion.  We 
want  to  find  out  what  act  first  brings  to  our  consciousness 
that  Many  elements  constitute  One  Order.  Nearest  to  the 
foundation  of  the  matter  Dedekind  seems  to  me  to  have  come, 
when,  without  previously  defining  any  number-series  at  all, 
he  sets  out  with  that  definition  of  an  infinite  system  of 
ideal  objects  which  we  have  already  stated,  and  then  proceeds, 
substantially  as  follows,  to  show  how  this  system  can  come  to 
be  viewed  Whole. 

Let  there  be  a  system  N  of  objects,  —  a  system  defined 
as  capable  of  the  type  of  self-representation  heretofore 
illustrated.  That  such  a  system  is  a  valid  object  (of  the 
type  definable  through  our  own  Third  Conception  of  Being), 
we  have  already  seen  by  the  one  example  of  meine  Qe- 
darikenwelt.  For  the  ideally  universal  law  of  meine  Oedan- 
kenwelt  is  that  to  every  thought  of  mine,  s,  I  can  make 
correspond  the  thought,  s',  viz.,  the  thought,  "This,  s,  is  one 
of  my  thoughts."  Because  of  this  single  ideal  law  of  the 
equally  ideal  Self  here  in  question,  the  GedanJcenwelt  is 
already  given  as  a  conceptual  system  of  many  elements,  —  a 
system  capable  of  exact  representation  by  one  of  its  own  con- 

Principles  of  Geometry  (known  to  me  in  the  German  translation,  Grund- 
zuge  der  Geometric,  libers  v.  Schepp,  Leipzig,  1894)  gives  a  very  elaborate 
development  of  the  number- concept  upon  the  basis  of  the  view  that  the 
order  of  a  series  of  conceived  objects  is  an  ultimate  fact  or  absolute  datum 
for  thought  (op.  cit.,  §  3,  14-28,  46-50).  Amongst  the  recent  text- 
books, Fine's  Number- System  of  Arithmetic  and  Algebra  holds  an 
important  place.  See  also  the  opening  chapter  of  Harkness  and  Morley's 
Introduction  to  the  Theory  of  Analytic  Functions. 


SUPPLEMENTARY   ESSAY  531 

stituent  portions.  Now  let  us  suppose  our  particular  system 
N  to  be  a  system  such  as  a  particular  portion,  itself  infinite, 
of  the  Gedankenwelt,  would  constitute.  Namely,  let  us  sup- 
pose our  system  Nto  be  capable  of  a  process  of  self -represen- 
tation that  first  selects  a  single  one  of  the  elements  of  N  (to 
be  called  One  or  element  the  first),  and,  that  then  represents 
the  whole  of  JVby  that  portion  of  N  which  is  formed  of  all  the 
elements  of  N  except  One.1  The  result  of  this  mode  of  self- 
representation  is  that  N  becomes,  in  the  sense  before  defined, 
a  Kette,  represented  by  a  part  of  itself,  N'.  This  part,  N', 
by  hypothesis,  contains  all  of  the  N  except  the  chosen  first 
element  named  One.  In  consequence,  and  because  of  the  very 
same  sort  of  reasoning  that  we  carried  out  in  case  of  the  map 
of  England  made  within  England,  N'  will  again  contain,  by 
virtue  of  the  one  principle  of  its  constitution,  a  further  part, 
N",  which  will  be  derived  from  N'  by  leaving  out  a  single 
element  of  N',  to  be  called  Two,  and  defined  as  the  second 
element  of  the  system.  Two  will  be,  in  fact,  the  name  of  that 
very  element  in  N'  which,  in  the  original  mapping  of  N  by 
N',  was  the  element  that  was  made  to  represent,  or  to  image, 
element  One.  But  the  process  of  expressing  the  meaning  thus 
involved  is  now  recurrent.  For  the  one  plan  of  representing 
N  by  N'}  with  the  omission  from  N'  of  the  single  element 
called  One,  has  involved  the  representing  of  N'  by  N"f  with 
the  omission  from  N"  of  the  single  element  now  called  Ttvo, 
—  an  element  which  is  merely  the  image  in  N'  of  One  in  N. 
The  same  plan,  however,  not  so  much  applied  anew,  as  simply 
once  fully  expressed,  implies  that  within  N"  there  is  an  N'", 
an  N",  and  so  on  without  end;  just  as  the  one  plan  of  map- 
ping England  within  England  involved  the  endless  series  of 
maps.  But  each  of  the  series  of  systems  N',  N",  N"',  etc., 
differs  from  the  previous  one  simply  by  the  omission  of  a 

1  In  order  to  accomplish  this  selection,  the  concept  of  an  individual 
content,  distinguished,  within  the  system,  as  this  and  no  other,  must  of 
course  be  presupposed  as  valid.  Such  a  concept  already  implies  an  indi- 
viduating interest  or  Will  which  selects.  But  this  will  is  here  presupposed 
only  in  the  abstract. 


532  SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY 

single  element  present  in  its  predecessor.  And  the  series  of 
these  successively  omitted  elements  has  an  order  absolutely 
predetermined  by  the  one  original  plan.  That  order  consists 
simply  in  the  fact  that  each  element  omitted,  when  any  of  the 
new  representations,  N",  N'",  etc.,  is  considered,  is,  upon 
each  occasion,  itself  the  Bild,  the  image  or  map  or  representa- 
tive, of  the  very  element  that  was  previously  omitted,  when 
N",  or  N'",  or  other  representation,  was  made.  The  endless 
series  One,  Two,  Three,  etc.,  is  consequently  the  series  of 
names  of  those  objects  whereof  the  first  was  omitted  when  the 
first  representation  or  the  mapping  of  N  was  made ;  while  the 
second  element  represented,  in  the  first  map,  N',  this  first  ele- 
ment of  N.  In  the  same  way,  in  the  second  map,  N",  the 
element  Three,  the  third  element  of  the  series,  represented  or 
pictured  the  second  element,  which  latter,  present  in  N',  had 
been  omitted  in  N". 

Thus  the  one  plan  of  mapping  or  representing  N  by  a  part 
of  itself,  taken  as  a  single  act,  accomplished  at  a  stroke,  logi- 
cally involves  what  one  can  then  express  as  an  endless  series 
of  maps  or  images  of  the  portion  or  element  of  N  that  is 
omitted  from  the  first  of  the  maps.  And  this  endless  ordered 
series  of  images  of  the  omitted  element  of  N,  can  be  so  carried 
out  as  to  constitute  a  derived  system  that  contains,  in  its  turn, 
any  member  of  N  that  you  please,  in  a  particular  place,  whose 
order  in  the  series  of  successive  images  is  absolutely  predeter- 
mined by  the  one  original  plan.  Hence,  as  Dedekind  has  it, 
"  we  say  that  the  system  N  is,  by  this  mode  of  representation, 
set  in  order  (geordnet) ." *  But,  let  us  observe,  this  whole 
order,  in  all  its  infinite  serial  complexity,  is  logically  accom- 
plished by  means  of  one  act. 

The  series  of  images,  or  representations,  of  the  element 
One,  thus  obtained,  has  of  course,  at  first  sight,  a  very  arti- 
ficial seeming.  But  a  glance  at  the  concrete  case  of  the 
Gedankenwelt  will  show  the  sense  of  the  process  more  directly. 
Let  my  Gedankenwelt  be  viewed  in  its  totality,  as  a  system 
self -represented  in  the  way  first  defined.  Then  the  one  plan 
1  Op.  cit.,  §  6,  71,  p.  20. 


SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY  533 

of  representing  any  thought  of  mine,  whether  itself  reflective 
or  direct,  by  a  reflective  thought  of  the  form,  This  is  one  of 
my  thoughts,  implies  that  about  any  primal  thought  of  mine, 
say  the  thought,  To-day  is  Tuesday,  there  ideally  clusters  an 
endless  system,  N,  of  thoughts  whereof  this  thought,  To-day 
is  Tuesday,  may  be  made  the  first  member.  These  thoughts 
may  follow  one  after  another  in  time.  But,  logically,  they 
are  all  determined  at  one  stroke  by  the  one  purpose  to 
reflect.  The  system  N  consists  of  the  original  thought,  and 
then  of  the  series  of  reflective  thoughts  of  the  form,  Tltis  is 
one  of  my  thoughts;  — yes,  and  This  last  reflection  is  one  of  my 
thoughts;  and  This  further  reflection  is  one  of  my  thoughts;  and 
so  on  without  end.  Now  the  system  N  is  known  to  be  infi- 
nite, not  by  counting  its  members  until  you  fail  and  give  up 
the  process  in  weariness,  but  by  virtue  of  the  universal  plan 
that  every  one  of  its  members  shall  have  a  corresponding  reflec- 
tive thought  that  shall  itself  belong  to  the  system.  Hereby 
already  N  is  defined  as  infinite,  before  you  have  counted  at 
all.  But  this  very  plan  determines  a  fixed  order  of  sequence, 
whether  temporal  or  logical,  amongst  the  constituent  elements 
of  N;  because  each  new  element,  to  be  taken  into  account 
when  you  follow  the  order,  is  defined  as  that  element  whereby 
the  last  element  is  to  be  imaged,  or  reflectively  represented. 
But  this  recurrent,  or  iterative,  character  of  the  operation  of 
thought  whereby  you  follow  the  series  of  elements,  is  really 
only  the  result  of  the  single  plan  of  self -representation  whereby 
once  for  all  the  system  N  is  ordered  according  to  its  defined 
first  member.  For  the  whole  system  N,  once  conceived  as 
mapped,  or  represented  by  that  portion  of  itself  which  does 
not  include  the  element  called  One,  is  even  thereby  at  one 
stroke  defined  as  an  ordered  series  of  representations  within 
representations,  like  our  series  of  maps  of  England.  This 
system  of  representations  within  representations  of  the  whole 
of  N,  is  given  as  a  valid  truth,  totum  simul,  by  the  definition 
of  the  undertaking.  The  series  of  temporally  successive  re- 
flective thoughts,  however,  is  found  to  be  ordered  as  a  result 
of  this  constitution  of  the  entire  system ;  and  therefore  is  its 


534  SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY 

iterative  meaning  clear  quite  apart  from  any  theory  as  to 
whether  time  and  succession  are  appearance  or  reality. 

Now  the  system  N  is,  by  definition,  simply  that  system  of 
thoughts  which,  if  present  at  once,  would  express  a  complete 
self-consciousness  as  to  the  act  of  thinking  that  To-day  is 
Tuesday.  Were  I  just  now  not  only  to  think  this  thought, 
but  to  think  all  that  is  directly  implied  in  the  mere  fact  that 
I  think  this  thought,  I  should  have  present  to  me,  at  once,  the 
whole  system  j^as  an  ordered  system  of  thoughts.  Precisety 
so,  the  whole  determined  GedanJcenwelt,  if  present  at  once, 
would  be  a  Self,  completely  reflective  regarding  the  fact  that 
all  of  these  thoughts  were  its  own  thoughts.  But  this  com- 
plete reflection  would,  in  all  its  portions,  involve  an  ordered 
system  of  thoughts,  whose  purely  abstract  form,  taken  merely 

tas  an  order,   is  everywhere  precisely  that  of  the  number- 
system. 

Self-representation,  then,  in  the  sense  now  so  fully  exem- 
plified, is  not  merely,  as  it  were,  the  property  or  accident  of 
the  number-system;  but  is,  logically  speaking,  its  genetic 
principle.  When  order  is  not  a  mere  "external  conjunction," 
when  we  know  not  merely  that  facts  seem  in  order,  but  what 
the  order  is,  and  how  it  is  one  order  through  all  of  its  mani- 
fold expressions,  we  do  so  by  virtue  of  comprehending  the 
internal  meaning  of  a  plan  whereby  a  system  of  conceived 
objects  comes  to  be  represented  through  a  portion  of  itself. 
Dedekind  has  shown  that  this  view  is  adequate  to  the  logical 
development  of  the  various  properties  of  the  number-system. 
What  we  here  observe  is  that  the  consequent  constitution  of 
the  number-system  is  explicitly  defined  as,  of  course  in  the 
barest  and  most  abstract  outline,  the  form  of  a  completed  Self. 
Here,  then,  the  Intellect,  "  of  its  own  movement, "  "  itself  by 
itself,  "  defines  what,  in  our  temporal  experience,  whether 
sensuous  or  thoughtful,  it  of  course  nowhere  finds  given, 
namely,  a  self-representative  system  of  objects,  parallel  in 
structure  to  what  the  structure  of  a  GedanJcenwelt  would  be  if 
it  were  the  Welt  of  a  completely  self-conscious  Thought,  none 
of  whose  acts  failed  to  be  its  own  intellectual  objects.  This 


SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY  535 

concept  comes  to  us  as  positive,  and  wholly  in  advance  of 
counting.  It  involves,  first,  the  general  definition  of  a  Kette, 
of  the  type  here  in  question,  whose  properties,  taken  in  their 
abstraction,  are  as  exactly  definable  as  those  of  a  triangle. 
Not  every  such  Kette  is  a  Self,  or  a  Gedankenwelt ;  for  of 
course  the  general  concept  of  a  system  possessing  some  sort  of 
one-to-one  correspondence,  can  be  applied  in  any  region,  how- 
ever abstract;  and  a  Kette  may  therefore  be  defined  where  the 
objects  in  question  are  taken  to  be  either  dead  matter  or  else 
mere  fiction.  Consequently  the  mathematical  world  is  simply 
full  of  Ketten  of  the  present  and  of  other  types.  But  the 
notable  facts  are,  first,  that  the  present  type  of  Kette  becomes 
the  very  model  of  an  ordered  system,  and,  secondly,  that  it 
becomes  this  by  virtue  of  the  fact  that  in  structure  it  is  pre- 
cisely parallel  to  the  structure  of  an  ideal  Self.  Herein  the 
intellect  does  indeed,  of  itself,  comprehend  its  own  work, 
even  though  this  work  be  but  an  ideal  creation. 

But  all  order  in  the  world  of  space,  of  time,  of  quantity,  or 
of  morals,  however  rich  its  wealth  of  life,  of  meaning,  or  of 
beauty  may  be,  is  order  because  it  presents  to  iis  systems  of 
facts  that  may  be  viewed  as  having  a  first,  a  second,  a  third 
constituent,  or  some  higher  form  of  order;  while  the  rank, 
dignity,  worth,  magnitude,  proportion,  structure,  description, 
explanation,  law,  or  other  reasonableness  of  any  of  these  ob- 
jects in  our  world  depends,  for  us,  upon  our  power  to  recognize 
in  them  what,  for  a  given  purpose,  comes  first,  what  second, 
and  so  on,  amongst  their  elements  or  their  higher  constituents. 
The  absolutely  universal  application  of  the  concept  of  order 
wherever  the  intellect  recognizes  in  any  sense  its  own,  in 
heaven  or  upon  earth,  shows  us  the  interest  of  considering 
even  these  barest  abstractions  regarding  simple  order.  The 
number-series  is  indeed  the  absolutely  abstract,  but  also  the 
absolutely  universal  and  inclusive  type  of  all  order,  —  the  one 
thing  that  every  rational  being,  however  much  he  may  differ 
in  constitution  from  us  men,  must,  in  some  shape,  possess, 
just  in  so  far  as  he  knows  any  complete  order  or  system  at  all, 
divine  or  diabolical,  moral  or  physical,  aesthetic  or  social, 


536  SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY 

formal  or  concrete.  For  the  deepest  essence  of  the  number- 
series  lies  not  in  its  power  to  aid  us  in  finding  how  many  units 
there  are  in  this  or  that  collection,  but  in  its  expression  of  the 
notion  that  something  is  first,  and  something  next,  in  any  type 
of  orderly  connection  that  we  may  be  capable  of  knowing.  It 
is  the  relational  system  of  the  numbers,  taken  in  their  whole- 
ness as  one  act,  which  here  interests  us.  Those  degrade 
arithmetical  truth  who  conceive  it  merely  as  the  means  for 
estimating  the  cardinal  numbers  of  collections  of  objects.  The 
science  of  arithmetic  is  rather  the  abstract  science  of  ordered 
collections.  But  all  collections,  if  they  have  any  rational 
meaning,  are  ordered  and  orderly.  Hence,  it  is  indeed  worth 
while  to  know  where  it  is  that  we  first  clearly  learn  what 
order  means. 

Now  it  is  not  very  hard  to  see,  and  to  say,  that  I  first  recog- 
nize order  as  a  form  of  unity  in  multiplicity  when  I  learn,  of 
myself,  to  put  something  first,  and  something  next,  and  self- 
consciously to  know  that  I  do  so.  That  counting  my  fingers, 
or  learning  the  names  of  the  numbers,  first  sets  me  upon  the 
way  to  attain  this  degree  of  self-consciousness,  is  true  enough. 
But  our  question  is  what  the  concept  of  order,  as  the  one 
transparent  form  of  unity  in  manifoldness,  directly  implies. 
In  following  the  analysis  of  the  number-concept,  we  have  been 
led  to  the  point  where  this  becomes  an  answerable  question. 
Given,  as  " bare  conjunction,"  is  what  you  will.  The  intellect, 
however,  as  Mr.  Bradley  well  says,  accepts  only  what  it  can 
make  for  itself.  The  first  object  that  it  can  make  for  itself, 
however,  is  seen,  as  Mr.  Bradley  also  says,  to  involve  the 
seeming  of  an  endless  process.  The  single  purpose  of  the 
intellect,  in  any  effort  at  self -comprehension,  proves  to  be  re- 
current precisely  when  it  is  most  obvious  and  necessary.  The 
infinite  task  looms  up  before  us;  and,  in  impatient  weariness, 
we  talk  of  "  endless  fission  "  breaking  out  everywhere,  and  are 
fain  to  give  up  the  task ;  failing,  however,  to  observe  that  just 
hereby  we  have  already  seen  how  the  One  must  express  itself, 
by  the  very  self -movement  of  the  intellect,  as  the  Many.  If 
we  reflect  afresh,  however,  we  observe  that  what  we  have  seen 


SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY  537 

is  due  to  the  fact  that  the  only  systems  of  ideal  objects  which 
the  intellect  can  define  without  taking  account  of  "  bare  ex- 
ternal conjunctions,"  are  systems  such  that  to  whatever  object 
we  have  presupposed,  another  object,  expressing  the  same 
intellectual  purpose,  must  correspond,  as  the  next  object  in 
question.  This  fact,  however,  is  due  to  the  simple  necessity 
of  the  reflective  process  in  which  we  are  involved. 

Our  thought  seeks  its  own  work  as  its  object.  That  is  of 
the  very  essence  of  this  effort  to  let  the  intellect  express  its 
self -movement.  But  making  its  own  work  its  object,  observ- 
ing afresh  what  it  has  done,  is  merely  reinstating,  as  a  fact 
yet  to  be  known,  the  very  process  whose  first  result  is  observed 
when  the  intellect  contemplates  its  own  just  accomplished 
deed.  Reflection,  then,  implies,  to  be  sure,  what,  in  time,  must 
appear  to  us  as  an  endless  process.  We  are  not  interested, 
however,  in  the  mere  feeling  of  weariness  which  this  endless 
process  (in  consequence  of  still  another  "bare  conjunction," 
of  a  psychological  nature)  involves  to  one  of  us  mortals  when 
he  first  observes  its  necessity.  What  interests  us  is  the  posi- 
tive structure  of  the  whole  intellectual  world.  We  have  found 
that  structure.  It  is  the  structure  of  a  self-representative 
system  of  the  type  that  we  now  have  in  mind.  We  frankly 
define  all  such  systems  as  endless,  so  far  as  concerns  the 
variety  of  their  elements.  But  hereupon  we  indeed  observe 
that,  as  self-representative,  they  are,  in  a  perfectly  transpar- 
ent way,  self-ordered.  The  trivial  illustration  of  the  map 
within  the  country  mapped,  has  been  followed  by  the  more 
exact  illustrations  of  the  self-representative  character  of  the 
complete  number-system  when  once  its  traditional  structure 
is  accepted  as  something  given  and  present  in  totality. 
With  these  examples  of  self-ordered  unity  in  the  midst  of 
infinite  diversity,  we  have  returned  to  the  question  of  the 
logical  genesis  of  the  very  conception  of  order  of  which  the  num- 
ber-system is  the  first  example.  We  have  found  the  answer 
to  our  question  in  the  assertion  that  since  a  self -representative 
system,  of  the  type  here  in  question,  once  assumed  as  an  ideal 
object,  determines  its  own  order,  and  assigns  to  its  constitu- 


538  SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY 

ents  their  place  as  first,  next,  and  so  on,  and  since  only  such 
self -representative  systems  result  from  the  undisturbed  expres- 
sion of  the  intellect's  internal  meanings,  therefore,  an  order 
that  shall  be  transparent  to  the  intellect,  or  that  shall  appear 
to  it  as  its  own  deed,  must  be  of  the  type  exemplified  in  Dede- 
kind's  analysis. 

And  so,  as  far  as  we  have  gone,  the  circle  of  our  investi- 
gation is  provisionally  completed.  The  intellect  has  been 
studying  itself,  and,  as  the  abstract  and  merely  formal  expres- 
sion of  the  orderly  aspect  of  its  own  ideally  conceived  complete 
Self,  and  of  any  ideal  system  that  it  is  to  view  as  its  own  deed, 
the  intellect  finds  precisely  the  Number  System,  —  not,  indeed, 
primarily  the  cardinal  numbers,  but  the  ordinal  numbers. 
Their  formal  order  of  first,  second,  and,  in  general,  of  next,  is 
an  image  of  the  life  of  sustained,  or,  in  the  last  analysis,  of 
complete  Reflection.  Therefore,  this  order  is  the  natural  ex- 
pression of  any  recurrent  process  of  thinking,  and,  above  all, 
is  due  to  the  essential  nature  of  the  Self  when  viewed  as  a 
totality.  Here,  then,  although  we  are  still  merely  in  the 
world  of  forms,  we  know  something  about  the  One  and  the 
Many. 

VI.    On  the  Realm  of  Reality  as  a  Self-Representative  System 

We  must  now  proceed  to  apply  our  previous  considerations 
to  the  question  of  the  constitution  of  any  realm  of  Being,  or 
of  any  universe. 

Suppose,  in  the  first  place,  for  a  moment,  that  one  is  to  con- 
ceive the  universe  in  realistic  terms,  as  a  realm  whose  existence 
is  supposed  to  be  independent  of  the  mere  accident  that  any 
one  does  or  does  not  know  or  conceive  it.  Suppose  such  a 
world  to  be  once  for  all  there.  Then  it  is  possible  to  show 
that  this  supposed  universe  has  the  character  of  a  self-repre- 
sentative system,  and  that,  too,  even  if  you  try  to  define  its 
ultimate  constitution  as  unknowable. 

For,  in  the  first  place,  at  the  moment  when  you  suppose 
that  any  fact  exists,  independently  of  whether  you  know  it  or 
not,  it  is  obvious  that  you  must  in  reality  be  making,  or  at 


SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY  539 

least,  by  hypothesis,  trying  to  make,  this  supposition.  For 
unless  the  supposition  is  really  attempted,  there  is  no  concep- 
tion of  F  in  question  at  all.  But  if  the  supposition  is  itself  a 
fact,  then,  at  that  instant,  when  the  supposition  is  made,  the 
world  of  Being  contains  at  least  two  facts,  namely,  F,  and  your 
supposition  about  F.  Call  the  supposition  /;  and  symbolize 
the  universe  by  U.  Then  the  least  possible  universe  that  can 
exist,  at  the  moment  when  your  hypothesis  is  made,  will  be 
such  that  U=F  +  f. 

Having  proceeded  so  far,  however,  we  cannot  stop.  As  we 
saw  in  analyzing  the  realistic  concept,  Realism  hopelessly 
endeavors  to  assert  that,  although  what  we  now  call  F  and  / 
are  alike  real,  they  have  no  essential  relations  to  each  other. 
For  our  present  purpose,  however,  we  need  only  note  that 
whether  or  no  the  relations  of  F  and  /  are  in  the  least  essen- 
tial to  the  being  of  either  F  or  /,  taken  in  themselves,  still, 
when  F  and  /  are  once  together  and  related,  the  relations  are 
at  least  as  real  as  their  terms.  Or,  even  if  we  confine  our- 
selves strictly  to  our  symbols,  it  remains  obviously  true  that 
in  order  merely  to  report  the  supposed  facts,  we  had  to  write, 
as  the  actual  constitution  of  our  universe,  at  least  F-\-f. 
Now  this  universe,  as  thus  symbolized,  has  not  merely  a  two- 
fold, but  a  threefold  constitution.  It  consists  of  F,  and  off, 
and  of  their  +,  i.e.  of  the  relation,  as  real  as  both  of  them, 
which  we  try  to  regard  as  non-essential  to  the  Being  of  either 
of  them,  but  which,  for  that  very  reason,  has  to  be  something 
wholly  other  than  themselves,  just  as  they  are  supposed  to  be 
different  from  each  other.  A  system  such  as  Herbart's  de- 
pends, indeed,  upon  trying  to  reduce  this  -f-  to  a  Zufallige 
Ansicht,  which  is  supposed,  for  that  reason,  to  be  no  part  of 
the  realm  of  the  "  reals."  But,  in  answer  to  any  such  effort,  we 
must  stubbornly  insist  (and  here  in  entire  agreement  with  Mr. 
Bradley)  upon  declaring  that  either  this  Zufallige  Ansicht 
stands  for  a  real  fact,  for  something  which  is,  or  else  the  whole 
hypothesis  falls  to  the  ground.  For  the  essence  of  the  hy- 
pothesis is  that,  f  rightly  supposes  Fto  exist,  or,  in  other  words, 
that  the  relation  between  F  and  /  is  one  of  genuine  reference, 


540  SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY 

assertion,  or  truth  on  the  part  of/,  and  of  actual  expression  of 
the  truth  of  this  assertion  by  the  very  existence  of  F.  There- 
fore, the  relation  between  F  and/  is  supposed  to  be  a  real  fact. 
Since,  by  hypothesis,  it  is  independent  of  the  mere  existence 
of  F  and  of  /,  or  since,  if  you  please,  F,  by  hypothesis,  might 
have  been  real  without  /,  and  /,  if  false,  might  have  existed, 
as  a  mere  opinion,  in  the  absence  of  any  F,  the  relation  which 
we  have  expressed  by  +  has  its  own  place  in  Being,  and  is  a 
third  and,  by  the  realistic  hypothesis,  a  separate  fact ;  so  that 
now  U  contains  at  least  three  facts,  all  different  from  one 
another. 

Hereupon,  of  course,  Mr.  Bradley's  now  familiar  form  of 
argument  enters  with  its  full  rights.  Unquestionably  a  world 
with  three  facts  in  it,  —  facts  such  that,  by  definition,  either 
/  or  F  might  have  existed  wholly  alone,  and  apart  from 
the  third  fact,  is  a  world  where  legitimate  questions  can  be 
raised  about  the  ties  that  bind  the  third  fact  to  the  other  two. 
These  ties  are  themselves  facts.  The  -f  is  linked  to  /and  to 
F,  and  the  "endless  fission"  unquestionably  "breaks  out." 
The  relation  itself  is  seen  entering  into  what  seem  new  rela- 
tions. The  reason  why  this  fission  breaks  out  is  now  more 
obvious  to  us.  It  lies  not  in  the  impotence  of  our  intellect, 
impotent  as  our  poor  human  wits  no  doubt  are,  but  in  the  self- 
representative  character  of  any  relational  system.  In  our 
realistic  world  the  system  is  such  that,  to  any  object,  there 
corresponds,  as  another  object  (belonging  to  the  same  system), 
the  relation  between  this  first  object  and  the  rest  of  the 
universe.  Or,  in  general,  if  in  the  world  there  is  an  object, 
F,  then  there  is  that  relation,  R,  whereby  F  is  linked  to  the 
rest  of  the  world.  But  to  R,  as  itself  an  object,  there  there- 
fore corresponds,  at  the  very  least,  R',  its  own  relation  to  the 
rest  of  the  world;  and  the  whole  system  F+  R  +  R'  is  as 
self-representative,  and  therefore  as  endless,  as  the  number- 
system,  and  for  precisely  the  same  reason:  viz.,  because  it 
images,  and,  by  hypothesis,  expresses,  in  the  abstract  form  of 
a  supposed  "independent  Being,"  the  very  process  of  the  Self 
which  undertakes  to  say,  "Sexists." 


SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY  541 

Now,  it  would  be  wholly  useless  for  a  realist  to  attempt  to 
escape  from  this  consequence  by  persistently  talking,  as  some 
realists  do,  about  the  defective  nature  of  our  poor  human 
thought,  and  about  the  Unknowability  of  the  Real.  For  the 
question  is  not  as  to  what  we  do  not  know,  but  merely  as  to 
what  we  do  know,  about  the  supposed  Independent  Beings. 
And  what  we  do  know  is,  that  by  definition  they  form  a  Kette 
of  the  type  now  in  question.  They  cannot  escape  from  this 
consequence  of  their  own  definition  by  declaring  their  true 
Being  to  be  unknowable.  For  if  they  attempt  thus  to  escape, 
we  shall  very  simply  point  out  that,  as  unknowable,  and  as 
thus  different  from  our  definition  of  their  Being,  they,  the 
realities,  have  now  merely  a  twofold  form  of  Being,  namely, 
their  Unknowable  and  their  Knowable  form.  For,  after  all, 
we  are  supposed  to  know  that  they  are,  and  that  they  appear 
to  us  in  the  form  of  a  Kette.  The  problem  of  the  "two 
natures  "  in  one  being,  is,  then,  upon  the  hands  of  any  realist 
who,  like  Mr.  Spencer,  thus  divides  his  world;  and  this  rela- 
tion, whether  knowable  or  unknowable,  between  the  Knowable 
and  the  Unknowable  aspects,  or  regions  of  Eeality,  will  become 
something  different  from  either  of  the  two ;  and  the  new  sys- 
tem will  once  more  be  a  Kette,  precisely  like  its  predecessor, 
and  for  the  same  reason. 

But,  finally,  one  may  attempt  to  escape  from  the  entire 
situation  by  declaring  that  F,  in  the  foregoing  account,  is,  by 
hypothesis,  a  fact  that  does  not  need  /,  since  /  is,  by  supposi- 
tion, a  conscious  process,  —  an  idea,  —  and  F  is  F  whether 
or  no  anybody  supposes  it  to  exist,  or  knows  it  in  any  way. 
"  Suppose  now,"  a  realist  may  say,  "that  there  were  no  knowl- 
edge or  ideas  at  all,  but  only  the  facts  independent  of  all 
minds,  and  totally  separate  from  one  another.  Then  the  real- 
istic world  would  not  be  an  endless  Kette."  Therefore  it  only 
becomes  one,  per  aceidens,  when  known. 

In  reply,  I  should  point  out,  that  if  the  world  that  contains 
F  contains  also  any  other  facts,  any  diversity  whatever,  Mr. 
Bradley's  repeated  analysis  of  the  "endless  fission"  will  at 
once  apply,  and  the  world  will  become  a  self-representative 


642  SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY 

system  in  the  former  sense.  But  F,  if  supposed  to  be  wholly 
alone,  and  to  be  the  only  Being,  and  absolutely  simple,  is 
still  not  exempt  from  the  universal  self-dirernption.  Wlien 
you  think  of  it,  — now,  for  instance,  it  is  not  alone.  It  is,  by 
hypothesis,  just  now  in  the  same  world  with  the  thoughts  that 
define  it.  "  But  it  is  such  that  it  need  not  be  together  with 
the  thoughts  that  think  it.  It  could  exist  independently." 
Yes,  but  to  exist  alone,  and  to  exist  in  company  with  another,  are 
not  the  same  thing.  F,  then,  has  two  aspects,  or  potencies : 
the  aspect  that  enables  it  to  exist  independently  of  /,  or  of 
any  thought,  and  its  power  to  exist  in  relation  to,  and  along 
with/,  and  with  the  rest  of  the  Kette  determined  by  the  pres- 
ence of/.  F,  the  same  F,  has  these  two  states  of  being,  — its 
existence  alone,  and  what  Herbart  called  its  Zusammen.  Now 
just  as  the  Zusammen  is,  by  hypothesis,  a  fact,  which  nobody 
gets  rid  of  by  calling  it  a  ZufdUige  Ansicht,  so  to  be  in  Zusam- 
men is  to  be  in  a  state  very  different  from  the  "  Being,  alone 
and  without  a  Second,"  which  F  has  before/  comes.  Call  F, 
when  taken  as  alone,  Flt  and  F,  when  taken  as  in  company, 
Ft.  Then  the  problem,  How  are  Fl  and  F2  related?  gives 
rise  to  the  same  sort  of  Kette  with  which  Mr.  Bradley  has 
made  us  so  familiar. 

I  agree,  then,  wholly  with  Mr.  Bradley,  that  every  form  of 
realistic  Being  involves  such  endless  or  self-representative 
constitution.  And  I  agree  with  him  that,  in  particular,  real- 
istic Being  breaks  down  upon  the  contradictions  resulting  from 
this  constitution.  I  do  not,  however,  accept  the  view  that  to 
be  self -representative  is,  as  such,  to  be  self -contradictory. 
But  I  hold  that  any  world  of  self-representative  Being  must 
be  of  such  nature  as  to  partake  of  the  constitution  of  a  Self, 
either  because  it  is  a  Self,  or  because  it  is  dependent  for  its 
form  upon  the  Self  whose  work  or  image  it  is.  But  the  real- 
istic world  is  not  able  to  accept  this  constitution.  In  case  of 
the  realistic  type  of  Being,  then,  the  endless  fission  proves 
to  be  an  endless  corruption  and  destruction  of  whatever  had 
appeared  to  be  the  fact.  Why?  For  the  reason  pointed  out, 
but  without  any  mention  of  the  mere  infinity  of  the  relational 


SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY  543 

process,  in  our  third  lecture.  You  want  from  a  realist  the 
facts,  and  all  the  facts,  which  are  essential  to  his  scheme.  He 
names  you  the  facts.  You  point  out  that  since  he  inevitably 
names  you  a  variety  of  facts,  he  must  also  admit  that  the  con- 
nections or  relations  of  these  facts  are  real.  And  then  you 
rightly  add  that  the  system  in  question  must  be  self-repre- 
sentative and  endless.  But  hereupon  first  appears  the  con- 
tradiction of  Realism,  viz.,  when  you  see  that  none  of  these 
endlessly  numerous  connections  actually  connect,  because  they 
are  to  be  connections  amongst  beings  that,  by  definition,  are 
independent  of  knowledge,  and  therefore,  as  we  saw,  of  one 
another,  in  such  wise  that  their  ties  and  links,  if  ever  these 
ties  seem  to  exist  at  all,  must,  upon  examination,  be  found  to 
be  other  real  beings,  as  independent  of  the  facts  that  they  were 
to  link  as  these,  in  their  first  essence,  were  of  one  another. 
The  endlessly  many  elements  of  this  world  turn  out,  then,  to 
be  endlessly  sundered.  The  Kette  of  the  realist  is  a  chain  of 
hopelessly  parted  links.  It  is  this  aspect  of  the  matter  which 
gives  their  true  cogency  to  the  arguments  of  Mr.  Bradley's 
first  book.  We  do  not  see,  then,  how  the  real  that  is  in  any 
final  sense  independent  of  knowledge  can  be  either  One  or 
Many  or  both  One  and  Many.  And  we  do  not  see  this  because 
we  can  see  and  define  nothing  but  what  is  linked  with  knowl- 
edge. But  within  knowledge  itself  we  do,  indeed,  still  find 
the  self -representative  system. 

So  much  for  the  realistic  conception  of  Being.  But  if  we 
turn  to  another  conception  of  the  nature  of  reality,  namely, 
to  our  Third  Conception  of  Being,  then  we  once  more  find  that 
this  conception,  too,  involves  a  self-representative  system  of 
the  type  here  in  question.  For  this  result  has  been  already 
illustrated  by  the  number-system,  by  the  Gedarikenwelt  of 
Dedekind,  and  by  the  other  mathematical  instances  cited ;  since 
all  of  these  objects,  when  mathematically  defined,  appear  pri- 
marily as  beings  of  the  third  type  of  our  list.  Whether  they 
possess  any  deeper  form  of  Being,  we  have  yet  to  see.  In  gen- 
eral, however,  it  is  interesting  to  note  that,  in  the  proof  of  the 
mathematical  possibility  or  validity  of  infinite  systems  given 


544  SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY 

by  Bolzano,  in  the  passage  of  his  Paradoxien  des  Unendlichen, 
already  cited,  the  typical  instance  chosen  to  exemplify  the 
infinite  is  that  system  of  truth,  or  of  wahre  Satze,  whose  va- 
lidity follows  from  any  primary  Satz,  or  from  any  collection  of 
such  Satze.  If  the  proposition  A  is  true,  it  follows,  as  Bolzano 
points  out,  that  the  proposition  which  asserts  that  "A  is  true," 
is  also  true.  Call  this  proposition  A'.  Then  the  proposition 
"A1  is  true,"  is  also  true;  and  so  on  endlessly.  While  Bolzano 
has  not  Dedekind's  exact  conception  of  the  nature  of  a  Kette, 
and  does  not  expressly  use  Dedekind's  positive  definition  of 
the  infinite,  his  example  of  the  series  of  true  propositions, 
A,  A',  A",  etc.,  — each  of  which  is  different  from  its  predeces- 
sor, since  it  makes  its  predecessor  the  subject  of  which  it  as- 
serts the  predicate  true,  —  is  an  example  chosen  wholly  in  the 
spirit  of  Dedekind's  later  selection  of  the  Gedankenwelt,  and  is 
an  extremely  simple  instance  of  a  self -representative  system.1 

Realism,  and  the  Third  Conception  of  Being  in  our  list, 
share  alike,  then,  whatever  difficulties  may  cluster  about  the 
conception  of  an  infinitely  self-representative  system.  What 
conception  of  Being  can  escape  from  this  fate?  Our  own 
Fourth  Conception? 

No,  as  we  must  now  expressly  point  out,  our  own  conception 
of  what  it  is  to  be  makes  the  Real  a  Kette  of  the  present  type. 

1  The  parallel  Kette  of  knowledge  was  observed  by  Spinoza,  Ethics, 
P.  II,  Prop.  43.  In  the  tract,  De  Intell.  Emendat.,  however,  Spinoza  tries 
to  explain  away  the  significance  of  the  endlessness  of  the  resulting  series. 
In  the  Ethics  he  says  that  whoever  knows,  knows  that  he  knows,  so  that 
to  an  adequate  idea,  an  adequate  idea  of  this  idea  is  necessarily  joined  by 
God  and  man.  But  in  the  Tractatus  he  asserts  that  the  idea  of  the  idea 
is  not  a  necessary  accompaniment  of  the  adequate  idea,  but  merely  may 
follow  upon  the  adequate  idea  if  we  choose.  The  contrast  of  expression 
in  the  two  passages  is  remarkable ;  and  the  question  is  of  the  most  critical 
importance  for  the  whole  system  of  Spinoza.  For  if  the  idea,  when  ade- 
quate, is  actually  self-representative,  the  form  of  parallelism  between 
extension  and  thought,  asserted  by  Spinoza,  finally  breaks  down,  since,  to 
avoid  the  troubles  about  the  infinite,  Spinoza  expressly  makes  extended 
substance  indivisible,  so  as  to  avoid  making  it  a  self-representative  system. 
Furthermore,  in  any  case,  no  precisely  parallel  process  to  the  idea  of  the 
idea  is  to  be  found  in  extended  substance. 


SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY  545 

For  from  our  point  of  view,  to  be,  or  to  be  real,  means  to  ex- 
press, in  final  and  determinate  form,  the  whole  meaning  and 
purpose  of  a  system  of  ideas.  But  the  fact  that  a  given 
experience  anywhere  fulfils  a  particular  purpose,  implies  that 
this  purpose  itself  is,  in  some  wise,  a  fact,  and  has  its  place  in 
reality.  But  if  this  purpose  is  real,  it  must,  by  our  hypothesis, 
be  real  as  a  fulfilment  of  a  purpose  not  absolutely  and  simply 
identical  with  itself.  And  so  any  particular  purpose  of  the 
Absolute  is  itself  such  as  it  is,  because  it  fulfils  a  particular 
purpose  other  than  itself.  Hence,  for  us,  the  Absolute  must 
be  a  self-representative  ordered  system,  or  Kette,  of  purposes 
fulfilled;  and  the  ordered  system  in  question  must  be  infinite. 
I  accept  this  consequence.  The  Absolute  must  have  the  form 
of  a  Self.  This  I  have  repeatedly  maintained  in  former 
discussions.  Despite  that  horror  of  the  infinite  which  Mr. 
Bradley 's  counsel  would  tend  to  keep  alive  in  me,  I  still  insist 
upon  the  necessity  of  the  consequence.  But  I  also  insist  upon 
several  important  aspects  of  the  Kette  in  terms  of  which  the 
Absolute  is  for  me  defined.  And  these  aspects  enable  me  to 
conceive  the  Absolute  not  only  as  infinite,  but  also  as  deter- 
minate, and  not  only  as  a  form,  but  as  a  life. 

First,  the  implied  internal  variety  is  subject  to,  and  is 
merely  expressive  of,  the  perfectly  precise  and  determinate 
unity  of  the  single  plan  whereby,  at  one  stroke,  the  Absolute 
is  defined,  or  rather  defines  itself,  as  a  self-representative  sys- 
tem. Secondly,  because  of  the  now  so  wearisomely  analyzed 
character  of  a  Kette  of  the  type  here  in  question,  the  self-pos- 
session or  self-consciousness  of  the  Absolute  does  not  imply 
any  simple  identity  of  subject  and  object  in  the  absolute  Self. 
The  map  of  England  (the  subjective  aspect  in  our  original 
illustration)  is  not  identical  with  the  whole  of  England.  Yet, 
in  the  supposed  Kette  of  maps,  once  taken  as  real,  the  whole 
of  England  is  mapped  within  itself.  Order  primarily  implies 
a  first  that  is  represented  by  the  second,  third,  and  later  mem- 
bers of  the  order,  but  that,  as  first,  is  itself  representative  of 
nothing  else.  The  Absolute,  in  my  conception,  has  this  first 
aspect,  which  is  essential  at  once  to  the  immediacy  of  its 

2K 


546  SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY 

experience,  and  to  the  individuality  which,  in  my  agreement 
with  Mr.  Bradley,  I  attribute  to  the  whole.  But  this  first 
aspect  of  Being  must  needs  be  represented,  within  itself,  by 
the  second,  third,  and  other  aspects.  In  other  words,  a  full 
possession  of  the  fulfilment  of  purpose,  in  final  and  deter- 
minate form,  involves,  as  the  first  element  in  the  conception 
of  Absolute  Being,  the  fact  that  purpose  is  fulfilled.  But  this 
fact  is  experienced,  is  known,  is  present,  is  seen.  Otherwise 
it  is  no  fact,  and  the  world  has  no  Being.  But  the  fact  that 
this  first  fact  is  known,  or  experienced,  is  itself  a  fact,  a  second 
fact.  This,  too,  is  known ;  and  so  on  without  end. 

Thirdly,  as  I  conceive,  this  whole  series  without  end  —  a 
series  which  can  equally  well  be  expressed  in  terms  of  knowl- 
edge and  in  terms  of  purpose  —  is  for  the  final  view,  and  in 
the  Absolute,  no  series  of  sundered  successive  states  of  tem- 
poral experience,  but  a  totum  simul,  a  single,  endlessly  wealthy 
experience.  And,  fourthly,  by  the  very  nature  of  the  type  of 
self-representation  here  in  question,  no  one  fashion  of  self- 
representation  is  required  as  the  only  one  in  such  a  realm 
of  Being.  As  the  England  of  our  illustration  could  be  self- 
mapped,  if  at  all,  then  by  countless  series  of  various  maps,  not 
found  in  the  same  part  of  England  and  not  in  the  least  incon- 
sistent with  one  another;  and  as  the  number-series, — that 
abstract  image  of  the  bare  form  of  every  self -representative 
system  of  the  type  here  in  question,  —  can  be  self -represented 
in  endlessly  various  ways,  —  so,  too,  the  self -representation  of 
the  Absolute  permitted  by  our  view  is  confined  to  no  one 
necessary  case ;  but  is  capable  of  embodiment  in  as  many  and 
various  cases  of  self-representation,  in  as  many  different 
forms  of  selfhood,  each  individual,  as  the  nature  of  the  abso- 
lute plan  involves.  So  that  our  view  of  the  Selfhood  of  the 
Absolute,  if  possible  at  all,  leaves  room  for  various  forms  of 
individuality  within  the  one  Absolute;  and  we  have  a  new 
opening  for  a  possible  Many  in  One,  —  an  opening  whose  value 
we  shall  have  to  test  in  another  way  in  our  second  series  of 
lectures. 

Our  own  view,  then,  also  implies  that  the  Absolute  is  a 


SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY  547 

Kette  of  the  type  now  in  question.  But  if  one  insists  that 
such  a  doctrine  is  inevitably  self -contradictory  and  vain,  — 
where  shall  one  still  look  for  escape  from  this  fate  which 
besets,  so  far,  all  of  the  views  as  to  the  Real? 

Shall  one  turn  to  Mysticism?  Mysticism,  viewed  in  its 
philosophical  aspect,  as  we  have  viewed  it  in  these  lectures, 
knows  of  a  One  that  is  to  be  in  no  sense  really  Many.  Every 
Kette  must,  then,  for  the  mystic,  prove  an  illusion.  But, 
unfortunately  for  the  mystic,  the  inevitableness  of  an  infinite 
process  is  nowhere  more  manifest  than  in  the  movement  of  his 
own  thought  while,  weary  of  finitude,  this  thought  indulges 
endlessly  its  sad  luxury  of  a  troubled  contemplation  of  its 
own  defects.  For  this  thought,  as  finite,  is,  by  hypothesis, 
nothing  real  at  all.  Yet  it  reveals,  in  its  own  negative  way, 
the  road  to  absolute  peace  and  truth.  This  road,  however,  is  a 
path  in  the  essentially  pathless  wilderness.  This  revelation  is 
explicitly  an  absolute  darkness.  While  you  think,  you  have  not 
won  the  truth;  for  thought  is  illusion.  But  if  you  merely 
cease  to  think,  you  have  thereby  won  nothing  at  all.  The 
Absolute  is  really  known  as  such  by  contrast  with  your  illusion. 
It  is  so  far  just  the  Other.  You  seek  it  in  thought,  and  find 
it  not.  But  perhaps  the  ineffable  experience  comes.  Ich  bin 
Gott  geworden,  says  the  Schwester  Katrei  of  the  tract  usually 
(and,  as  the  critics  now  tell  us,  wrongly)  attributed  to 
Meister  Eckhart.  This  experience,  whenever  it  comes,  — 
why  is  it  said  to  be  an  experience  of  Being?  Viewed^ 
from  without,  it  seems  a  mere  transient  state  of  feeling  in 
somebody's  mind.  But  no;  it  shall  be  no  mere  feeling,  for  it 
reveals  all  that  thought  had  ever  sought.  The  peace  that 
passeth  understanding  fulfils  all  the  needs  of  understanding. 
Hence,  in  this  peace  thought  finds  itself  satisfied,  and  ceases. 
Therefore  is  Being  here  attained.  Yet  if  this  be  the  mystical 
insight, — what  has  been  gained?  Thought  the  deceiver, 
thought  the  illusory,  bears  witness  to  its  own  refutation  and 
to  its  own  fulfilment  in  the  peace  of  the  Absolute ;  for  only 
when  this  evidence  is  given  of  the  final  satisfaction  of  all 
thought's  demands  is  the  truth  known.  And  thus  the  sole 


548  SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY 

testimony  that  Being  is  what  the  mystic  declares  it  to  be,  is  a 
witness  borne  by  this  self-detected  and  hopeless  liar,  thought^ 
—  whose  words  are  the  speech  of  one  who  exists  not  at  all,  but 
only  falsely  pretends  to  exist,  and  whose  ideas  are  merely  lies. 
This  liar,  at  the  moment  of  the  mystical  vision,  declares  that 
he  rests  content ;  and  therefore  we  know,  forsooth,  that  we 
have  come  upon  "that  which  is,"  and  have  caught  the  "deep 
pulsations  of  the  world."  We  accept,  then,  the  last  testimony 
of  the  wholly  hardened  and  hopeless  deceiver;  and  this  dying 
word  of  false  thought  is  our  sole  proof  of  the  Absolute  Truth. 

Can  this  be  really  the  mystic's  ultimate  wisdom?  No;  the 
unconscious  silence  in  which  he  ought  forever  to  dwell,  once 
broken  by  his  first  utterance  when  he  teaches  his  doctrine, 
leads  him  to  endless  speech,  —  but  to  speech  all  of  the  same 
infinitely  self-denying  kind.  The  ineffable  is  ineffable. 
Therefore  it  is  indeed  "hard  to  frame,  in  matter-moulded 
forms  of  speech,"  the  meaning  of  what  has  been  won  at  the 
instant  of  the  mystical  vision.  This  difficult  task  is,  in  fact, 
a  self-representative  and  infinite  task.  For  it  is  the  task  of 
endless  denial  even  of  every  previous  act  of  denial.  The  only 
word  as  to  the  Absolute  must  be  Neti,  Neti,  —  It  is  not  so,  not 
so.  But  this  only  word  needs  endless  repetition  in  new  forms. 
The  Absolute,  if  you  will,  was  not  well  reported  when  we  just 
gave,  as  the  reason  for  the  truth  of  the  mystical  insight,  the 
fact  that  thought  found  itself  at  rest  in  the  presence  of  God. 
For  the  thought  really  finds  not  itself,  at  all.  It  finds,  as  the 
truth,  only  its  own  Other.  But  in  what  way  does  it  find  its 
Other  as  the  truth?  Answer,  By  seeing,  in  the  endless  pro- 
cess of  its  own  failure,  the  necessity  of  its  own  defeat,  —  the 
need  of  Another.  So  then  —  as  we  afresh  observe  —  thought 
does  know  itself  as  a  failure.  It  does  represent  to  itself  its 
own  defeat.  It  does,  then,  learn,  by  a  dialectic  process,  to 
comprehend  its  own  lying  nature.  But  herewith  we  return  to 
our  starting-point,  and  can  only  continue  the  same  process 
without  end. 

In  brief,  mysticism  turns  upon  a  recognition  of  the  failure 
of  all  thinking  to  grasp  Keality.  But  this  recognition  is  itself 


SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY  649 

thought's  own  work.  Thought  is,  so  far,  a  system  which 
represents  to  itself  its  own  nature,  —  as  a  nature  doomed  to 
failure.  If  you  try  to  express  this  recognition,  however,  not 
as  thought's  work,  but  as  a  direct  revelation,  in  a  merely  im- 
mediate experience,  of  a  final  fact,  you  at  once  rediscover  that 
this  fact  is  final  only  if  it  is  known,  as  in  contrast  to  the  fail- 
ure of  thought.  The  failure  of  thought  must,  therefore,  once 
more  be  known  to  thought.  But  such  self-knowledge  on 
thought's  part  can  only  be  won  through  the  ineffable  experi- 
ence; and  so  you  proceed  back  and  forth  without  end.  The 
reason  for  this  particular  endless  chain  is  that  mysticism  turns 
upon  a  process  whereby  something,  namely,  thought,  is  to 
represent  to  itself  its  own  negation  and  defeat.  The  conse- 
quence is  a  self-representative  system  of  failure,  in  which 
every  new  attempt,  based  upon  the  failure  of  the  former  at- 
tempts to  win  the  truth,  itself  involves  the  process  of  tran- 
scending the  former  failure  by  means  of  the  very  principle 
whose  failure  is  to  be  observed. 

And  now,  at  last,  let  us  ask,  Does  Mr.  Bradley's  Absolute 
escape  the  common  fate  of  all  of  our  conceptions  of  Being? 
Is  Mr.  Bradley's  Absolute  alone  exempt  from  being  a  self- 
representative  system  of  the  type  here  in  question? 

I  am  obliged  to  answer  this  question  in  the  negative.  Mr. 
Bradley's  account  of  the  Absolute  often  comes  near  to  the  use 
of  mystical  formulations,  but  Mr.  Bradley  is  of  course  no 
mystic ;  and  nobody  knows  better  than  he  the  self-contradictions 
inherent  in  the  effort  to  view  the  real  as  a  simple  unity,  with- 
out real  internal  multiplicity.  As  we  have  seen,  Mr.  Brad- 
ley's  Absolute  is  One,  and  yet  does  possess,  as  its  own,  all  the 
manifoldness  of  the  world  of  Appearance.  The  central  diffi- 
culty of  metaphysics,  for  Mr.  Bradley,  lies  in  the  fact  that  we 
do  not  know  how,  in  the  Absolute,  the  One  and  the  Many  are 
reconciled.  But  that  they  both  are  in  the  Real  is  certain. 
Reality  is  explicitly  called  by  Mr.  Bradley  a  System.  "We 
insist  that  all  Reality  must  keep  a  certain  character.  The 
whole  of  its  contents  must  be  experience;  they  must  come 
together  into  one  system,  and  this  unity  itself  must  be  expe- 


550  SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY 

rience.  It  must  include  and  must  harmonize  every  possible 
fragment  of  appearance"  (op.  cit.,  p.  548).  "Reality  is  one 
experience,  self-pervading,  and  superior  to  mere  relations " 
(p.  552).  Now  that  Reality,  while  a  "system,"  is  to  be  viewed 
as  experience,  this  assertion  is  due  to  Mr.  Bradley's  definition 
of  what  it  is  to  be  real.  "  I  mean  that  to  be  real  is  to  be  indis- 
solubly  one  with  sentience.  It  is  to  be  something  which 
comes  as  a  feature  and  aspect  within  one  whole  of  feeling, 
something  which,  except  as  an  integral  aspect  of  such  sen- 
tience, has  no  meaning  at  all"  (p.  146).  "You  cannot  find 
fact  unless  in  unity  with  sentience,  and  one  cannot  in  the  end 
be  divided  from  the  other,  either  actually  or  in  idea." 

Now  this  account  of  the  Absolute  must  of  course  be  taken 
literally.  It  is  not  a  speech  about  an  Unknowable.  It  is, 
indeed,  not  an  effort  to  tell  how  the  unity  is  accomplished  in 
detail.  But  it  is  a  general,  and  by  hypothesis  a  true  account, 
of  what  the  final  unity  must  accomplish.  We  have  therefore 
a  right  to  observe  that  Mr.  Bradley's  Absolute,  however  much 
above  our  poor  relational  way  of  thinking  its  unity  may  be, 
really  has  two  aspects  that,  although  inseparable,  are  still 
distinguishable.  The  varieties  of  the  world  are  somehow 
"absorbed,"  or  "rearranged,"  in  the  unity  of  the  Absolute 
Experience.  This  is  one  aspect.  But  the  other  aspect  is  that, 
since  this  absorption  itself  is  real,  —  is  a  fact,  —  and  since  to 
be  real  is  to  be  one  with  sentience,  the  fact  that  the  absorption 
occurs,  that  the  One  and  the  Many  are  harmonized,  and  that  the 
Absolute  is  what  it  is,  is  also  a  fact  presented  within  the  sentient 
experience  of  the  Absolute.  It  is  not,  then,  that  the  rivers  of 
Appearance  merely  flow  into  the  silent  sea  of  Reality,  and  are 
there  lost.  No;  this  sentient  Absolute,  by  hypothesis,  feels, 
experiences,  is  aware,  that  it  thus  absorbs  its  differences.  In 
general,  whatever  the  Absolute  is,  its  experience  must  make 
manifest  to  itself.  For  either  this  is  true,  or  else  Mr.  Brad- 
ley's  definition  of|  Reality  is  meaningless.  Let  A  be  any  char- 
acter of  the  Absolute.  Then  the  fact  that  A  is  a  character  of 
the  Absolute,  as  such,  and  not  of  the  mere  appearances,  is  also 
a  genuine  fact.  As  such,  it  is  a  fact  experienced. 


SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY  551 

The  Absolute  therefore  must  not  merely  be  A,  but  experience 
itself,  as  possessing  the  character  of  A.  It  is,  for  instance, 
"above  relations."  If  this  is  a  fact,  and  if  this  statement  is 
true  of  the  Absolute,  then  the  Absolute  must  experience  that  it 
is  above  relations.  For  Mr.  Bradley's  definition  of  Reality  re- 
quires this  consequence.  The  Absolute  of  Mr.  Bradley  must 
not,  like  the  mystical  Absolute,  merely  ignore  the  relations  as 
illusion.  It  must  experience  their  "transformation  "  as  a  fact, 
—  and  as  its  own  fact.  Or,  again,  the  Absolute  is  that  in 
which  thought  has  been  "taken  up"  and  "transformed,"  so 
that  it  is  no  longer  "mere  thought."  Well,  this  too  is  to  be 
a  fact.  In  consequence  of  Mr.  Bradley's  definition  of  what  he 
means  by  the  word  "real,"  this  fact  must  take  its  place 
amongst  the  totality  of  fact  that  is  in  its  wholeness  experi- 
enced. The  Absolute,  then,  experiences  itself  as  the  absorber 
and  transmuter  of  thought.  Or,  yet  again,  the  Absolute  is  so 
much  above  "personality"  that  Mr.  Bradley  (p.  532)  finds 
"  intellectually  dishonest "  "  most  of  those  "  who  insist  upon 
regarding  the  Absolute  as  personal.  Well,  this  transcendence 
of  personality  is  a  fact.  But  "Reality  must  be  one  experi- 
ence; and  to  doubt  this  conclusion  is  impossible."  "Show 
me  your  idea  of  an  Other,  not  a  part  of  experience,  and  I  will 
show  you  at  once  that  it  is,  throughout  and  wholly,  nothing 
else  at  all."  Hence,  the  fact  that  the  Absolute  transcends 
personality  is  a  fact  that  the  Absolute  itself  experiences  as  its 
own  fact,  and  is  "  nothing  else  at  all "  except  such  a  fact. 

As  we  have  before  learned,  the  category  of  the  Self  is  far  too 
base,  in  Mr.  Bradley's  opinion,  to  be  Reality,  and  must  be 
mere  appearance.  The  Absolute,  then,  is  above  the  Self,  and 
above  any  form  of  mere  selfhood.  The  fact  that  it  is  thus 
above  selfhood  is  something  "  not  other  than  experience  " ;  but 
is  wholly  experience,  and  is  the  Absolute  Experience  itself. 
In  fine,  then,  the  Absolute,  in  Mr.  Bradley's  view,  knows 
itself  so  well,  —  experiences  so  fully  its  own  nature,  — that  it 
sees  itself  to  be  no  Self,  but  to  be  a  self-absorber,  "  self -per- 
vading" to  be  sure  (p.  552),  and  "self -existent,"1  but  aware 

1  "  Our  standard  is  Reality  in  the  form  of  self-existence  "  (p.  375). 


552  SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY 

of  itself,  in  the  end,  as  something  in  which  there  is  no  rea\ 
Self  to  be  aware  of.  Or,  in  other  words,  the  Absolute  is 
really  aware  of  itself  as  being  not  Reality,  but  Appearance, 
just  in  so  far  as  it  is  a  Self.  Meanwhile,  of  course,  this  Abso- 
lute experiences,  also,  the  fact  that  it  is  an  "  individual " ;  that 
it  is  a  "  system  " ;  that  it  "  holds  all  content  in  an  individual 
experience  " ;  that  "  no  feeling  or  thought  of  any  kind  can  fall 
outside  its  limits"  (p.  147);  that  it  "stands  above  and  not 
below  its  internal  distinctions  "  (p.  533) ;  that  "  it  is  not  the 
indifference,  but  the  concrete  identity  of  all  extremes."  For 
all  these  statements  are  said  by  Mr.  Bradley,  in  various  places, 
to  be  accounts  of  what  the  Absolute  really  is.  But  if  the 
Absolute  is  all  these  things,  it  can  be  so  only  in  case  it  expe- 
riences itself  as  the  possessor  of  these  characters.  Yet  all  the 
concrete  self-possession  of  the  Absolute  remains  something 
above  Self;  and  apparently  the  Absolute  thus  knows  itself  to 
be,  as  a  Self,  quite  out  of  its  own  sight! 

Now  in  vain  does  one  endeavor  to  assert  all  this,  and  yet  to 
add  that  we  know  not  how,  in  detail,  all  this  can  be  true  of 
the  Absolute.  We  know,  at  all  events,  that  apart  from  what 
is  flatly  self-contradictory  in  the  foregoing  expressions,  Mr. 
Bradley's  Absolute  is  a  self-representative  system,  which 
views  itself  as  the  possessor  of  what,  through  all  the  unity, 
remains  still  in  one  aspect  another  than  itself,  namely,  the 
whole  world  of  Appearance.  And  we  know,  therefore,  that 
the  Absolute,  despite  all  Mr.  Bradley's  objections  to  the  Self, 
escapes  from  selfhood  and  from  all  that  selfhood  implies,  or  even 
transcends  selfhood,  only  by  remaining  to  the  end  a  Self.  In 
other  words,  it  really  escapes  from  selfhood  in  no  genuine 
fashion  whatever.  For  it  can  escape  from  selfhood  only  by 
experiencing,  as  its  own,  this,  its  own  escape.  This  conse- 
quence is  clear.  Whatever  is  in  the  Absolute  is  experienced 
doubly.  Namely,  what  is  there  is  experienced,  and  that  this 
content  is  experienced  by  the  Absolute  itself,  —  this  final  fact 
is  also  experienced.  Hence,  the  whole  Absolute  must  be  infi- 
nite in  precisely  Dedekind's  positive  sense  of  the  term.  Mr. 
Bradley's  Absolute  is  a  Kette  in  the  same  sense  as  every  other 


SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY  553 

fundamental  metaphysical  conception.     For  it  is  a  self-expe- 
riencing and,  therefore,  self -representative  system. 

I  conclude,  then,  so  far,  that  by  no  device  can  we  avoid 
conceiving  the  realm  of  Being  as  infinite  in  precisely  the  posi- 
tive sense,  now  so  fully  illustrated.     The  Universe,  as  Sub- 
ject-Object, contains  a  complete  and  perfect  image,  or  view  of 
itself.     Hence  it  is,  in  structure,  at  once  One,  as  a  single  sys- 
tem, and  also  an  endless  Kette.     Its  form  is  that  of  a  Self. 
To  observe  this  fact  is  simply  to  reflect  upon  the  most  ele- 
mentary and  fundamental  implications  of  the  concept  of  Being. 
The  Logic  of  Being  has,  as  a  central  theorem,  the  assertion, 
Whatever  is,  is  apart  of  a  self-imaged  system,  of  the  type  herein 
discussed.     This  truth  is  common  property  for  all,  whether 
realists  or  idealists,  whether  sceptics  or  dogmatists.     And 
hence  our  trivial  illustration  of  the  ideally  perfect  map  of 
England  within  England,  turns  out  to  be,  after  all,  a  type  and 
image  of  the  universal  constitution  of  things.     I  am  obliged  to 
regard  this  result  as  of  the  greatest  weight  for  any  metaphysi- 
cal enterprise.1    No  philosophy  that  wholly  ignores  this  ele- 

I 1  was  years  ago  much  struck  by  the  remarkable  proof,  in  the  first 
volume  of  Schroeder's  Algebra  der  Logik,  of  the  purely  formal  proposition 
that  no  simply  constituted  Universe  of  Discourse  could  be  denned,  in 
terms  of  the  Algebra  of  Logic,  as  the  absolute  whole  of  Being,  without  an 
immediately  stateable  self-contradiction,  resulting  from  the  mere  definition 
of  the  symbols  used  in  that  Algebra.      See  Schroeder,  Vol.  I,  p.  245. 
The  metaphysical  interest  of  this  purely  symbolic  result  is  not  mentioned 
by  Schroeder  himself.     The  proof  given  by  him  turns,  however,  upon 
showing  that  if  you  regard  provisionally,  as  the  "  whole  of  the  universe," 
or  as  "  all  that  is,"  any  simply  denned  universe  of  classes  of  objects,  you 
are  confronted  by  contradictions  as  soon  as  you  reflect  that  the  "  totality 
of  what  is"  also  contains  a  realm  of  secondary  objects  that  you  may 
define  by  reflecting  upon  the  classes  contained  in  the  first  universe,  and 
by  classifying  these  classes  themselves  from  new  points  of  view.     This 
realm  of  secondary  objects,  however,  does  not  consistently  belong  to  the 
primary  universe  that  in  a  purely  formal  way  you  first  defined.     The  true 
totality  of  Being  can  therefore  only  be  defined  by  an  endless  process,  or 
is  an  endless  reflective  system.     This  proof  of  Schroeder's  first  brought 
home  to  me  the  fact  that  the  necessity  for  defining  reality  in  self-reflecting 
or  endless  terms  is  not  dependent  upon  any  one  metaphysical  interprets- 


554  SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY 

mentary  fact  can  be  called  rational.  And  hereby  we  have 
indeed  found  a  sense  in  which  the  "  endless  fission  "  of  Mr. 
Bradley's  analysis  expresses  not  mere  Appearance  but  Being. 
Here  is  a  law  not  only  of  Thought  but  also  of  Reality.  Here 
is  the  true  union  of  the  One  and  the  Many.  Here  is  a  multi- 
plicity that  is  not  "absorbed"  or  "transmuted,"  but  retained 
by  the  Absolute.  And  it  is  a  multiplicity  of  Individual 
facts  that  are  still  One  in  the  Absolute. 

SECTION  IV.    INFINITY,    DETERMINATENESS,    AND  INDIVIDU- 
ALITY 

Despite  all  the  foregoing  considerations,  however,  we  have 
still  to  face  the  objection  that,  even  if  these  constructions  be 
regarded  as  self-evident  products  of  Thought,  they,  neverthe- 
less, simply  cannot  be  genuinely  true  of  the  final  nature  of 
Reality  and  must  somehow  be  fallacious.  For,  from  Mr. 
Bradley's  side,  it  would  be  maintained  that  however  inevitable 
the  seeming  of  these  endless  processes,  they  become  self -con- 
tradictory precisely  when  you  take  them  to  be  real  and  yet 
endless.  For  who  knows  not  the  Aristotelian  arguments,  so 
often  repeated  in  later  thought,  against  the  actual  Infinite? 
Is  not  the  complete  Infinite  the  very  type  of  a  logical  "  mon- 
ster?" Is  not  the  very  conception  a  self-contradiction?  If 
thought,  then,  has  to  conceive  Reality  as  infinite,  so  much  the 
worse,  one  may  say,  for  thought.  The  Real,  whatever  its  ap- 
pearance, cannot  in  itself  be  endless. 

I.    The  Objections  to  the  Actually  Infinite 

It  is  necessary  to  consider  such  arguments  by  themselves, 
for  the  moment,  and  apart  from  the  foregoing  considerations. 
Let  us,  then,  briefly  develope  some  of  these  often  repeated 
reasons  on  account  of  which  so  many  assert  that  Reality  cannot 
be  an  infinite  system  at  all. 

tion  of  the  world,  -whether  realistic  or  idealistic,  but  is  the  consequence 
of  a  purely  abstract  account  of  the  formal  Logic  of  the  concept  of  Reality 
in  any  of  its  forms. 


SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY  555 

One  may  begin  with  the  case  as  Aristotle  first  stated  it, 
in  the  Third  Book  of  the  Physics,  and  elsewhere.  There  can, 
indeed,  exist  a  Reality  that  permits  us,  if  we  choose  to  number 
its  parts,  to  distinguish  within  it  what  we  call  elements,  in 
such  wise  that  we  can  never  end  the  process  of  numbering 
them.  So  space  is  for  us  capable  of  infinite,  that  is,  of  indefi- 
nite division,  if  you  choose  to  try  to  take  it  to  pieces.  But 
such  divisibility  is  a  mere  possibility.  Space,  if  real,  is  not 
endlessly  divided.  It  is  only  in  potentia  divisible  so  far  as  you 
please  to  conceive  its  parts.  The  limitless  exists,  therefore, 
only  in  potentia;  XeiVcTai  ow  Swa/nei  ctvat  TO  aarupov.  For  were 
space  actually  either  made  up  of  endless  parts,  or  in  such  wise 
real  as  to  be  infinitely  great,  there  would  result  the  contradic- 
tion of  an  actually  infinite  number  as  the  number  of  the  parts 
of  a  real  collection.  But  a  number  actually  infinite  is  contra- 
dictory; for  it  then  could  not  be  counted;  it  would  have  no 
determinate  size;  it  would  possess  no  totality;  and  it  would 
so  be  formless  and  meaningless.  Again,  were  any  one  portion 
of  the  world's  material  substance  infinite,  how  could  room  be 
left  for  the  other  portions?  Were  the  whole  infinite,  how 
could  it  be  a  whole  at  all?  For  any  whole  of  reality  is  limited 
by  its  own  form,  and  by  the  fact  that,  as  an  actual  whole,  it 
is  perfectly  determinate.  The  difficulty  as  to  the  infinite  must 
be  solved,  then,  by  saying  that  what  is  real  forms  a  definite 
and,  for  that  reason,  a  finite  totality ;  while  within  this  totality 
there  may  be  aspects  which  our  thought  discovers  to  be,  in 
this  or  that  respect,  inexhaustible  through  any  process  of 
counting  that  follows  some  abstractly  possible  line  of  our  own 
subjective  distinctions  or  syntheses.  We  can  say,  of  such 
aspects  of  the  world,  that  you  may  go  on  as  long  as  you  please, 
in  counting  their  special  type  of  conceived  complexities,  with- 
out ever  reaching  the  end.  But  this  endlessness  is  potential 
only,  and  never  actual. 

These  well-known  Aristotelian  considerations  have  formed 
the  basis  of  every  argument  against  the  actual  infinite  in  later 
thought.  The  special  point  of  attack  has,  however,  often 
shifted.  In  general,  as  the  later  arguments  have  repeatedly 


556  SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY 

urged  (quite  in  Aristotle's  spirit),  the  infinitely  complex,  it 
real,  must  be  knowable  only  through  some  finished  synthesis 
of  knowledge.  But  a  finished  synthesis  is  inconsistent  (so  one 
affirms)  with  the  endlessness  of  the  series  of  facts  to  be  syn- 
thesized; and  hence  an  infinite  collection,  if  it  existed,  would 
be  unknowable.  On  the  other  hand,  an  infinite  collection,  if 
real  apart  from  knowledge,  could  be  conceived  to  be  altered  by 
depriving  it  of  some,  or  of  a  considerable  fraction,  of  its  con- 
stituent elements.  The  collection  thus  reduced  (so  one  has 
often  argued)  would  be  at  once  finite  (since  it  would  have  lost 
some  of  its  members)  and  infinite,  since  no  finite  number  would 
be  equal  to  exhausting  the  remaining  portion.  Hence  the 
reduced  collection  and,  therefore,  the  original  collection  must 
be  of  a  contradictory  nature,  and  so  impossible.  In  a  varia- 
tion of  this  argument  often  used,  one  employs,  as  an  image, 
some  such  instance  as  an  inextensible  rod,  one  end  of  which 
shall  be  in  my  hands,  while  I  shall  be  supposed  to  believe  that 
the  rod,  which  stretches  out  of  my  sight  into  the  heavens,  is 
infinitely  long,  as  well  as  quite  incapable  of  being  anywhere 
stretched.  Suppose  the  rod  hereupon  drawn,  or,  if  you  please, 
anyway  mysteriously  moved,  a  foot  towards  me  at  this  end.  If 
I  am  to  believe  in  the  infinity  and  inextensibility  of  the  rod,  I 
shall  believe  that  the  whole  of  the  rod,  and  every  part  thereof, 
is  now  a  foot  nearer  to  me  than  before.  But  in  that  case  the 
furthest  portion  of  the  rod  must  also  be  a  foot  nearer  than 
before,  or  must  have  been  "drawn  in  out  of  the  infinite,"  as 
one  writer  has  stated  the  case.1  It  can  therefore  no  longer  be 
an  infinite  rod.  Hence,  it  was  not  actually  infinite  before  the 
drawing  in  of  this  end. 

All  such  arguments  insist,  either  upon  the  supposed  fact 

1  Constantin  Gutberlet,  Zeitschrift  fur  Philosophic  (  Ulrici-Falcken- 
berg),  Bd.  92,  Hft.  II,  p.  199.  The  wording  of  the  example  is  a  little 
different  in  the  text  cited.  The  force  of  the  argument  no  longer  exists  for 
one  who  approaches  the  concept  of  the  Infinite  through  that  of  the  Kette. 
Cantor  observes  as  much  in  his  answer  to  Gutberlet  in  the  same  journal. 
The  puzzle  turns  upon  falsely  identifying  the  properties  of  finite  and 
infinite  quantities. 


SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY  557 

that  our  own  conception  of  an  infinite  series  is  necessarily  a 
conception  of  an  indefinite  and,  therefore,  of  an  essentially 
incomplete  sequence,  or  else  upon  the  assertion  that  an  infinite 
collection,  if  viewed  as  real,  would  prove  to  be  in  itself  of  a 
quantitatively  indefinite  and  changeable  character.  In  the 
one  case,  the  argument  continues  by  showing  that  an  indefinite 
and  incomplete  sequence  is  incapable  of  being  taken  to  be  a 
finished  reality  beyond  our  thought.  In  the  other  case,  one 
insists  that  the  quantitatively  indefinite  collection,  if  viewed 
as  real,  would  stand  in  conflict  with  the  very  notion  of  reality, 
since  the  real  is,  as  such,  the  determinate.  "  The  essence  of 
number,"  says  Mr.  Bosanquet,1 "  is  to  construct  a  finite  whole 
out  of  homogeneous  units."  "An  infinite  number  would  be  a 
number  which  is  no  particular  number;  for  every  particular 
number  is  finite."  "  An  infinite  series  2  .  .  .  is  not  anything 
which  we  can  represent  in  the  form  of  number,  and  therefore 
cannot  be,  qud  infinite  series,  a  fact  in  our  world.  .  .  .  Our 
constructive  judgment  requires  parts  and  a  whole  to  give  it 
meaning.  Parts  unrelated  to  any  whole  cannot  be  judged  real 
by  our  thought.  Their  significance  is  gone  and  they  are  parts 
of  nothing." 

More  detailed,  in  the  application  of  the  general  charge  of 
indefiniteness  thus  made  against  the  conception  of  the  infinite 
collections,  are  the  often  used  arguments  such  as  exemplify 
how,  if  infinite  collections  are  possible  at  all,  one  infinite  must 
be  greater  than  another,  while  yet,  as  infinite  and  determinate, 
all  the  boundless  collections  must  (so  one  supposes)  be  equal. 
Or,  again,  in  a  similar  spirit,  one  has  pointed  out  that,  by 
virtue  of  the  properties  which  we  have  deliberately  attrib- 
uted to  the  Ketten  of  the  foregoing  discussion,  two  infinite 
collections,  if  they  existed,  would  be,  in  various  senses  of  the 
term  equal,  at  once  equal  and  unequal  to  each  other,  or  would 

1  Logic,  I,  p.  175.  We  have  already  seen  how  imperfect  this  view  of 
the  number-series  is,  since  the  number-series,  as  a  product  of  thought,  is 
primarily  ordinal,  and  its  essence  is  to  express,  very  abstractly,  the 
orderly  development  of  a  reflective  purpose. 

1  Loc.  cit.,  p.  177. 


558 

contradict  the  axiom  as  to  the  whole  and  the  part.1  These 
arguments  can  be  illustrated  by  an  endless  list  of  examples, 
drawn  from  the  realm  of  discrete  collections  of  objects,  as  well 
as  from  cases  where  limitless  extended  lines,  surfaces,  or 
volumes  are  in  question,  and  from  cases  where  limitless  divisi- 
bility is  to  be  exemplified.  The  variety  of  the  examples,  how- 
ever, need  not  confuse  one  as  to  the  main  issue.  What  is 
brought  out,  in  every  case,  is  that  the  infinite  collections  or 
multitudes,  if  real  at  all,  must  be  in  paradoxical  contrast  to 
all  finite  multitudes,  and  must  also  be  in  such  contrast  as  to 
seem,  at  first  sight,  either  quite  indeterminate  or  else  hope- 
lessly incomplete,  and,  in  either  case,  incapable  of  reality. 

Upon  a  somewhat  different  basis  rest  a  series  of  arguments 
which  have  more  novelty,  just  because  they  are  due  to  the  ex- 
perience of  the  modern  exact  sciences.  In  the  seventeenth  cen- 
tury one  of  the  greatest  methodical  advances  ever  made  in  the 
history  of  descriptive  science  occurred,  when  the  so-called 
Infinitesimal  Calculus  was  invented.  The  Newtonian  name, 
Fluxions,  used  for  the  objects  to  whose  calculation  the  new 
science  was  devoted,  indicated  better  than  much  of  the  more 
recent  terminology,  that  one  principal  purpose  of  this  advance 
in  method,  was  to  enable  mathematical  exactness  to  be  used  in 
the  description  of  continuously  varying  quantities.  But  the 
generalization  which  was  made  when  the  Calculus  appeared  had 
been  the  outcome  of  a  long  series  of  studies  of  quantity,  both 
temporal  and  spatial.  And  the  Calculus  brought  under  one 
method  of  treatment,  not  only  the  problems  about  continuous 
processes  of  actual  change,  such  as  motions,  or  other  continu- 
ous physical  alterations,  but  also  problems  regarding  the  prop- 
erties, the  relations,  the  lengths,  and  the  areas  of  curves,  and 

1  Couturat,  in  his  dialectical  discussion  between  the  "  finitist"  and  the 
"infinitist,"  in  ISInfini  Mathematique,  p.  443  sqq.,  gives  full  room  to  a 
statement  of  these  arguments  of  his  opponents.  Our  account  of  the 
Ketten  has  discounted  them  in  advance.  Dedekind's  Definition  of  the 
Infinite  deliberately  makes  naught  of  them.  If  infinite  multitudes  cor- 
responding to  his  definition  can  be  proved  real,  these  paradoxes  will  be 
simply  obvious  properties  of  such  multitudes. 


SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY  559 

regarding  the  corresponding  features  of  geometrical  surfaces 
and  solids.  For,  in  all  these  objects  alike,  either  continuous 
alterations,  or  else  characters  that,  although  matters  of  spatial 
coexistence,  may  be  ideally  expressed  in  terms  of  such  con- 
tinuous alterations,  fell  within  the  range  of  the  methods  of  the 
Calculus. 

The  new  method,  however,  seemed  to  involve,  at  first, 
the  conception  both  of  "infinitely  small"  quantities,  and 
of  devices  whereby  an  "  infinite  number "  of  such  quantities 
could  be  summed  together,  or  otherwise  submitted  to  compu- 
tation. The  science  of  the  continuous,  in  the  realm  of  geo- 
metrical forms,  as  well  as  in  the  realm  of  physical  changes, 
thus  seemed  to  depend  upon  the  conception  both  of  the  infi- 
nitely small  and  of  the  infinitely  great;  and  the  successful 
application  of  the  results  of  such  science  in  the  realm  of 
physics,  was  sometimes  used  as  a  proof  that  nature  contains 
actually  infinite  and  actually  infinitesimal  collections  or  magni- 
tudes. But  the  early  methods  of  the  Infinitesimal  Calculus 
were  not  free  from  inexactness,  and  led,  upon  occasion,  to 
actually  false  conclusions.  Hence,  the  paradoxes  apparently 
involved  in  the  logical  bases  of  the  science  attracted  more  and 
more  critical  attention,  as  time  went  on;  and,  as  a  conse- 
quence, within  the  present  century,  the  whole  method  of  the 
Calculus  has  been  repeatedly  and  carefully  revised,  —  with 
the  result,  to  be  sure,  that  the  conceptions  of  the  actually 
infinite,  in  the  sense  here  in  question,  and  the  actually  infini- 
tesimal (in  the  older  sense  of  the  term),  have  been  banished 
from  the  principal  modern  text-books  of  both  the  Differential 
and  the  Integral  Calculus.  The  terms,  "  Infinite  "  and  "  Infin- 
itesimal," have  been,  indeed,  very  generally  retained  in  such 
text-books  for  the  sake  of  conciseness  of  expression ;  but  with 
a  definition  that  wholly  avoids  all  the  problems  which  our  fore- 
going discussion  has  raised.  The  infinite  and  the  infinitesi- 
mal of  the  Calculus  can,  therefore,  no  longer  be  cited  in  favor 
of  a  theory  of  the  "actually  Infinite." 

In  the  world  of  varying  quantities,  namely,  it  often  hap- 
pens that,  by  the  terms  of  definition  of  a  given  problem, 


560  SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY 

you  have  upon  your  hands  a  varying  quantity  (call  it  X) 
which,  consistently  with  these  terms,  you  are  able  to  make, 
or  to  assume,  as  large  as  you  please.  In  such  cases,  if 
some  one  else  is  supposed  to  have  predesignated,  as  the 
value  of  X,  any  definite  magnitude  that  he  pleases,  say  X^ 
then  you  are  at  liberty,  under  the  conditions  of  the  prob- 
lem, to  assume  the  value  of  X  as  larger  still,  i.e.  as  greater 
than  any  such  previously  assigned  definite  value  X^.  Now, 
whenever  the  variable  X  has  this  character,  in  a  given 
problem,  then,  according  to  the  fashion  of  speech  used  in 
the  Calculus,  you  may  define  X  either  simply  as  infinite,  or 
as  capable  of  being  increased  to  infinity;  and  in  the  Calculus 
you  are  indeed  often  enough  interested  in  learning  what  hap- 
pens to  some  quantity  whose  value  depends  upon  X,  when  X 
thus  increases  without  limit,  or,  as  they  briefly  say,  becomes 
infinite.  But  in  all  such  cases  the  term  infinite,  as  used  in  the 
modern  text-books  of  the  Calculus,  is,  by  definition,  simply 
an  abbreviation  for  the  whole  conception  just  defined.  The 
variable  X  need  not  even  be,  at  any  moment,  actually  at  all 
large  in  order  to  be,  in  this  sense,  infinite.  It  only  so  varies 
that,  consistently  with  the  conditions  of  the  problem,  it  can  be 
made  larger  than  a  predesignated  value,  whatever  that  value 
may  be.  And  the  Calculus  is  simply  often  interested  in  com- 
puting the  consequences  of  such  a  manner  of  variation  on  the 
part  of  X. 

Now,  unquestionably  a  quantity  that  is  called  infinite  in 
this  sense  is  not  the  actually  infinite  against  which  Aristotle 
argued.  It  is  merely  the  limitlessly  increasing  variable  or 
the  potentially  infinite  magnitude  which  he  willingly  admitted 
as  a  valid  conception.  A  parallel  definition  of  the  infinitesi- 
mal is  even  more  frequently  employed  in  the  modern  text-books 
of  the  Calculus,  just  because  the  infinitesimal  is  mentioned 
more  frequently  than  the  infinite.  In  this  sense,  a  variable 
magnitude  is  infinitesimal  merely  when  it  can  be  made  and  kept 
as  small  as  we  will,  consistently  with  the  conditions  of  the  prob- 
lem in  which  it  appears.  Thus  neither  the  infinite  nor  the 
infinitesimal  of  the  modern  treatment  of  the  Calculus  has  any 


SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY  561 

fixed  character,  as  a  finished  or  finally  given  quantity,  nor  any 
character  which  could  be  defined  as  a  determinately  real  some- 
what, apart  from  our  defining  thought,  and  apart  from  the  con- 
ditions of  a  given  problem.  The  Calculus  is  deeply  interested 
in  computing  results  of  such  variation  without  limit;  but  as  a 
branch  of  mathematics,  it  is,  in  fact,  not  at  all  directly  inter- 
ested in  our  present  problem  about  the  actually  infinite.1 

Now,  this  result  of  the  whole  experience  of  the  students  of 
the  Calculus  with  the  logic  of  their  own  science,  —  this  out- 
come of  the  modern  critical  restudy  of  the  bases  of  the  science 
of  the  continuously  variable  quantities,  —  tends  of  itself  to 
indicate  (as  one  may  say,  and  as  objectors  to  the  actually  In- 
finite have  often  said)  that  the  conception  of  the  actually 
Infinite,  formerly  confounded  with  the  conceptions  lying  at 
the  bases  of  the  Calculus,  is,  as  a  fact,  not  only  in  this  region, 
but  everywhere,  scientifically  superfluous;  while  the  concep- 
tion of  the  Infinite  merely  in  potentia,  originally  defended  by 
Aristotle,  thus  triumphs  in  the  very  realm  where,  for  a  time, 
its  rival  seemed  to  have  found  a  firm  foothold.2 

Yet  it  has  indeed  to  be  observed  that,  from  the  mathematical 
point  of  view,  not  the  questions  of  the  Calculus,  but  certain 
decidedly  special  problems  of  the  Theory  of  Numbers,  and 
of  the  modern  Theory  of  Functions,  have  given  the  mathe- 
matical basis  for  these  newer  efforts  towards  an  exact  and 
positive  definition  of  the  Infinite.  As  a  fact,  in  our  fore- 
going statement  of  the  merely  prima  facie  case  for  the  recent 
definition  of  the  positively  Infinite,  we  have  deliberately  re- 

1  All  this  is  not  only  admitted,  but  insisted  upon  by  Cantor  himself,  as 
a  preliminary  to  his  own  discussion  of  das  Eigentlich-  Unendliche,  which 
he  sharply  distinguishes  from  such  Uneigentlicher  concept  of  the  Infinite 
as  has  to  be  used  in  the  Calculus.     See  his  separately  published  Grund- 
zuge  einer  allgemeinen  Mannigfaltigkeitslehre  (Leipzig,  1883),  p.  1,  sqq. 
Compare  the  statement  in  Professor  Franz  Meyer's  lecture,  before  cited, 
to  the  same  effect. 

2  This  line  of  argument  against  the  Infinite  has  often  been  used,  —  most 
recently  perhaps  by  F.  Evellin,  in  his  two  articles  directed  against  the 
metaphysical  use  of  Cantor's  theories,  in  the  Revue  Philosophique  for 
February  and  November,  1898. 

2o 


562  SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY 

framed  from  making  any  mention  of  the  special  problems 
about  continuity,  or  of  the  conceptions  of  the  Calculus.  And 
it  has  also  been  noted  that  Cantor,  who  has  done  so  much  to 
make  specific  the  positive  concept  of  das  Eigentlich-Unendliche, 
and  who  has  also  given  us  one  of  the  very  first  of  the  exact 
definitions  of  continuous  quantity  ever  discovered,  —  him- 
self rejects  the  actually  infinitesimal  quantities  as  quite 
impossible;  and  does  so  quite  as  vigorously  as  he  accepts 
and  defends  the  actually  infinite  quantities ;  so  that  he  fully 
agrees  that  the  infinitesimal  must  remain  where  the  Calcu- 
lus leaves  it,  namely,  simply  the  variable  small  at  will.1  It 
must  therefore  be  distinctly  understood  that,  in  the  discus- 
sion of  the  reality  of  the  infinite  quantities  and  multitudes, 
appeal  need  no  longer  be  made  to  the  conceptions  of  quantity 
peculiar  to  the  Calculus ;  while,  in  general,  the  majority  of 
those  concerned  in  this  inquiry  expressly  admit  that  the  logic 
of  the  Calculus  is  quite  independent  of  the  present  issue,  and 
that  the  infinite  of  the  Calculus  is  simply  the  variable  large  at 
will,  which  therefore  need  not  be  at  any  moment,  even  notably 
large  at  all.2 

And  now,  finally,  there  is  also  urged  against  any  conception 
of  the  actually  Infinite  the  well-known  consideration  that  the 
conception  of  such  infinity  involves  an  empty  and  worthless 
repetition  of  the  same,  over  and  over,  —  a  mere  "  counting  when 
there  is  nothing  to  count,"  or,  in  the  realm  of  explicit  reflec- 
tion, a  vain  observation  that  I  am  I,  and  that  I  am  I,  again, 
even  in  saying  that  /  am  7,  —  or  an  equally  inane  insistence 

1  See  Cantor's  statement  in  the  Zeitschr  f.  Philos.,  Bd.  88,  p.  230 ; 
and  in  the  same  journal,  Bd.  91,  p.  112,  in  a  passage  there  quoted  from  a 
letter  addressed  by  Cantor  to  Weierstrass.     I  am  unable  to  understand 
how  Mr.  Charles  Peirce,  in  his  paper  in  the  Monist  (1892,  p.  537  of  Vol. 
2)  is  led  to  attribute  to  Cantor  his  own  opinion  as  to  the  infinitesimals. 

2  Mr.  Charles  Peirce,  as  I  understand  his  statements  in  the  Monist  (loc. 
cit,),  appears  to  stand  almost  alone  amongst  recent  mathematical  logicians 
outside  of  Italy,  in  still  regarding  the  Calculus  as  properly  to  be  founded 
upon  the  conception  of  the  actually  infinite  and  infinitesimal.     In  Italy, 
Veronese  has  used  in  his  Geometry  the  concept  of  the  actually  infini- 
tesimal. 


SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY  563 

that  /  know,  and  know  that  I  know,  and  so  on.  The  non- 
mathematical  often  dislike  numbers,  especially  the  large  ones, 
and  therefore  easily  make  light  of  a  wisdom  that  seems  only 
to  count,  in  monotonous  inefficacy.  Even  the  more  reflective 
thinkers  often  believe,  with  Spinoza,  that  knowing  that  I  know 
can  imply  nothing  essentially  new,  at  all  events  after  the 
reflection  has  been  two  or  three  times  repeated.  The  Hindoo 
imagination,  with  its  love  for  large  numbers,  often  strikes  the 
Western  mind  as  childish.  And  in  all  such  cases,  since  mere 
size,  as  such,  rightly  seems  unworthy  of  the  admiration  that 
it  has  excited  in  untrained  minds,  it  has  appeared  to  many  to 
be  the  more  rational  thing  to  say  that  wisdom  involves  rather 
Hegel's  Ruckkehr  aus  der  unendlichen  Flucht  than  any  accept- 
ance of  the  notion  that  infinite  magnitudes  or  multitudes  can 
be  real. 

II.    The  Infinite  as  One  Aspect  only  of  Being 

All  the  foregoing  objections  to  the  conception  of  the  actually 
infinite  rest,  in  large  measure,  upon  a  true  and  perfectly  rele- 
vant principle.  As  a  fact,  what  is  real  is  ipso  facto  deter- 
minate and  individual.  It  is  this  for  the  reasons  pointed  out 
in  the  closing  lectures  of  the  present  series.  It  is  this  because 
it  is  such  that  No  Other  can  take  its  place.  The  Real  is  the 
final,  the  determinate,  the  totality.  And  now,  not  only  is  this 
principle  valid,  but  it  is  indeed  supreme  in  every  metaphysical 
inquiry.  And  therefore  we  shall,  to  be  sure,  find  it  true  that 
in  case,  despite  all  the  foregoing  highly  important  objections, 
we  succeed  in  reconciling  infinity  with  determinateness,  we 
shall  still  be  unable  to  assert  that  the  Reality  is  anything 
merely  infinite.  For  infinity,  as  such,  is  at  best  a  character,  — 
a  feature  having  the  value  of  an  universal.  If  the  Absolute 
is  in  any  sense  an  infinite  system,  it  is  certainly  also  an  unique 
and  individual  system ;  and  its  uniqueness  involves  something 
very  clearly  distinguishable  from  its  mere  infinity.  The  Abso- 
lute is,  in  its  determinate  Reality,  certainly  exclusive  of  an 
infinity  of  mere  possibilities.  In  this  respect  I  shall  here 
simply  repeat  the  position  taken  in  the  discussion  supple- 


564  SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY 

mentary  to  the  book  called  the  Conception  of  God.1  It  is, 
then,  perfectly  true,  for  me,  as  for  the  opponents  of  the  actual 
Infinite,  that  much  must  be  viewed  as,  in  the  abstract,  "  pos- 
sible," which  is  nowhere  deterininately  presented  in  any  final 
experience  of  the  fulfilment  of  truth.  The  special  illustration 
used,  in  my  former  book,  to  exemplify  this  fact,  namely,  the 
illustration  of  the  points  on  the  continuous  line,  —  points 
which  are  "possible"  in  an  infinitely  infinite  collection  of 
ways,  but  which,  however  presented,  cannot  exhaustively  con- 
stitute the  determinate  continuity  of  the  line,  — this,  I  say,  is 
an  illustration  involving  other  problems  besides  those  of  the 
actual  Infinite.  The  existence  of  the  line,  taken  as  a  geometri- 
cal fact,  contains  more  than  the  possible  multitudes  of  multi- 
tudes of  the  points  on  the  line  can  ever  express.  And  this 
more  includes,  also,  a  something  more  determinate  than  the  mul- 
titudes of  the  points  can  conceivably  present.  Hence,  as  I 
argued  in  my  former  book,  and  as  I  still  deliberately  maintain, 
the  Absolute  cannot  experience  the  nature  of  the  line  by  merely 
exhausting  any  infinitude  of  the  points.  But  to  this  illustra- 
tion I  can  here  devote  no  further  space,  since  the  discussion 
of  continuity,  and  especially  of  the  geometrical  continuum, 
lies  outside  of  the  scope  of  this  paper.  It  is  quite  consistent, 
however,  to  hold,  as  I  do,  that  while  the  Absolute  indeed, 
by  reason  of  its  determinateness,  excludes  and  must  exclude 
infinitely  infinite  "bare  possibilities,"  known  to  mere  thought, 
from  presentation  in  any  individual  way,  except  as  ideas  of 
excluded  objects,  the  Absolute  still  finds  present,  in  the  indi- 
vidual whole  of  its  Selfhood,  an  actually  infinite,  because  self- 
representative,  system  of  experienced  fact.  The  points  on  the 
line,  then,  if  my  former  illustration  is  indeed  well  chosen,  are 
not  exhaustively  presented,  as  constituting  the  whole  line,  in 
any  experience,  whatever,  Absolute  or  relative.  But  this,  as 
we  now  have  to  see,  is  not  because  the  actually  Infinite  is,  to 
the  Absolute,  something  unrepresented,  but  because  the  de- 
terminate geometrical  continuity  of  the  individual  line  is 
something  more,  and  more  determinate,  than  any  infinitude  of 
1  New  York,  1897,  p.  194,  sqq. 


SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY  565 

points  can  express.  And  this  individuality  of  the  line  I  can 
and  do  express  by  saying  that,  even  to  a  final  view,  the  essence 
of  the  individual  continuity  of  any  one  line  involves  the  "  bare 
possibility"  of  systems  of  ideal  points  over  and  above  any 
that  are  found  present  in  this  final  experience  of  the  line. 
Even  if  the  Absolute,  then,  observes  infinitely  infinite  collec- 
tions of  points,  it  sees  that  the  individual  continuity  of  the 
line  is  more  than  they  present.  This  I  still  assert. 

In  general,  as  we  shall  see,  by  virtue  of  what  here  follows, 
a  fair  account  of  the  completeness  of  the  Absolute  must  be  just 
to  two  aspects.  They  are  the  ultimate  aspects  of  Reality. 
Their  union  constitutes,  once  more,  the  world-knot.  And  the 
reason  of  their  union  is  the  one  made  explicit  in  our  seventh 
Lecture.  The  Real  is  determinate  and  individual;  and  the 
Real  is  expressive  of  all  that  universal  ideas,  taken  in  their 
wholeness,  actually  demand,  or  mean,  as  their  absolutely  satis- 
factory fulfilment.  In  this  twofold  thesis,  as  I  understand,  I 
am  wholly  in  agreement  with  Mr.  Bradley.  But  I  differ  from 
him  by  maintaining  that  we  know  more  than  he  admits  con- 
cerning how  the  Real  combines  these  two  aspects.  I  maintain, 
then,  with  a  full  consciousness  of  the  paradoxes  involved,  that 
the  Reality  is  indeed  a  Self,  whatever  else  it  is  or  is  not.  For 
the  Absolute,  as  I  insist,  would  have  to  be  not  apparently,  but 
really  a  Self,  even  in  order  to  be  (as  Mr.  Bradley  seems  to 
imagine  his  Absolute)  a  sort  of  self-absorbing  sponge,  that 
endlessly  sucked  in,  and  "transformed,"  its  own  selfhood, 
until  nothing  was  left  of  itself  but  the  mere  empty  spaces 
where  the  absorbent  Self  had  been.  For  the  category  of  Self 
is  indeed  immortal.  Deny  it,  and,  in  denying,  you  affirm  it. 
As  a  fact,  however,  the  Absolute  is  no  sponge.  It  is  not  a 
cryptic  or  self-ashamed,  but  an  absolutely  self -expressive  self. 
And  to  see  how  it  can  be  so  without  contradiction,  is  simply 
to  see  how  the  concept  of  the  actually  Infinite,  despite  all  the 
foregoing  objections,  is  not  self-contradictory,  is  not  indeter- 
minate, is  not  merely  based  upon  wearisome  reflections  of  the 
same ;  but  is  a  positive  and  concrete  conception,  quite  capable  of 
individual  embodiment.  This  is  what  we  shall  see  in  what 


566  SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY 

here  follows.  The  concept  of  the  actually  Infinite  once  in 
general  vindicated  from  the  charge  of  self-contradiction,  all 
objection  to  conceiving  the  Absolute  as  a  Self  will  vanish ;  and 
the  transparent  union  of  the  One  and  the  Many,  which  reflec- 
tive thought  has  already  shown  us  within  its  own  realm,  will 
become  the  universal  law  of  Being. 

But,  on  the  other  hand,  if  the  Absolute  is  a  Self,  and,  as 
such,  an  Infinite,  this  does  not  mean  that  it  is  anything  yon 
please,  or  that  it  is  at  once  all  possible  things,  or  that  it  views 
its  realm  of  fact  as  having  all  possible  characters  at  once,  and 
hence  as  having  no  character  in  particular.  This  Self,  and  no 
Other,  this  world  and  no  Other,  this  totality  of  experience,  and 
nothing  else,  —  such  is  what  has  to  be  presented  when  the  Real 
is  known  as  the  real.  The  Infinite  will  have  to  be  also  a  deter- 
minate Infinite,  a  self -selected  case  of  its  type.  For  the  world 
as  merely  thought,  or  as  merely  defined  in  idea,  is  the  world 
viewed  with  an  abstract  or  bare  universality,  and  as  that  which 
still  demands  its  Other,  and  which  refers  to  that  Other  as  valid 
and  possible.  The  world  of  thought  is,  as  such,  an  effort  to 
characterize  this  Other,  to  imitate  it,  to  correspond  to  it,  and, 
of  course,  if  so  may  be,  to  find  it.  Hence  the  world  of  mere 
thought  has,  as  its  very  life,  a  principle  of  dissatisfaction ;  and 
when  it  conceives  its  object  as  the  Truth,  it  defines,  in  the 
object,  only  the  sense  in  which  there  is  to  be  agreement  or 
correspondence  between  the  object  and  the  thought.  Conse- 
quently, an  idea  taken  merely  as  an  imitation  of  another,  or 
taken  as  having  an  external  meaning,  expresses  the  Truth  only 
as  a  barely  universal  validity.  And  one  who  merely  takes 
thought  as  thought  conceives  the  shadow  land  which  shall, 
nevertheless,  somehow  have  the  value  of  a  standard.  In  that 
realm,  —  the  realm  of  mere  validity,  —  all  ia  mere  character, 
and  type,  and  possibility.  And  thought  is  the  endlessly  rest- 
less definition  of  another,  and  yet  another.  And  this  is  true 
even  when  thought  conceives  an  Infinite.  Hence,  infinity,  as 
merely  conceived,  is  indeed  not  yet  Reality  as  Reality. 

Now,  the  opponents  of  the  actual  Infinite,  ever  since  Aris- 
totle, have  always  seen,  and  rightly  seen,  that,  as  defined  by 


SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY  567 

mere  thinking  about  external  meanings,  the  world  is  not  finally 
defined.  The  restlessly  infinite,  as  such,  they  have  condemned 
as  in  so  far  unreal.  For  whoever  sees  reality,  sees  that  which 
has  no  Other  like  itself,  which  seeks  no  Other  to  define  its 
being,  which  is  itself  no  mere  correspondence  between  one 
object  and  another,  and,  despite  its  unquestionable  character 
as  the  fulfilment  of  thought,  no  mere  agreement  between  a 
thought  and  a  fact.  The  Heal,  then,  has  not  the  character 
which  bare  thought,  as  such,  emphasizes,  — the  character  of 
being  essentially  incomplete.  It  has  wholeness.  Its  meaning 
is  internal  and  not  external.  Therefore,  it  is  indeed  a  finished 
fact.  It  cannot,  then,  be  infinite  if  infinity  implies  incom- 
pleteness. 

But,  once  more,  is  the  Eeal  for  that  reason  finite?  Because 
it  excludes  the  search  for  another  beyond  itself,  does  it  there- 
fore contain  no  infinite  wealth  of  presented  content  within 
itself?  This  is  precisely  the  question.  In  emphasizing  the 
exclusiveness  of  the  Real  we  must  be  just  to  the  fact  that, 
whatever  it  excludes,  it  cannot,  from  our  point  of  view,  be 
poorer,  less  wealthy,  less  manifold  in  genuine  meaning,  than 
the  false  Other,  which  its  reality  reduces  to  a  bare  and  un- 
realized possibility  of  thought.  That  the  world  is  what  it 
determinately  is,  means,  from  our  point  of  view,  that  its  being 
excludes  an  infinitely  complex  system  of  "barely  possible" 
other  contents,  which,  just  because  they  are  excluded  from 
Reality,  are  conceived  by  a  thought  such  that  not  all  of  its 
"  barely  possible  "  ideal  objects  could  conceivably  be  actualized 
at  once.  In  this  sense,  for  us,  just  as  for  the  partisans  of  the 
barely  possible  and  unactualized  infinite,  there  are  indeed 
ideas  of  infinitely  numerous  facts  which  remain,  from  an 
Absolute  point  of  view,  hypotheses  contrary  to  fact.1  We 
agree,  moreover,  with  our  opponents,  that  no  process  expresses 
reality  in  so  far  as  this  process  merely  seeks,  without  end,  for 
another  and  another  object  or  fact.  Hence,  for  us,  as  for  our 
opponents,  the  Infinite,  when  taken  merely  as  an  endless 

1  See  Conception  of  God,  pp.  196,  198,  201,  213-214.  See  also  the 
concluding  lecture  of  the  present  series. 


568  SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY 

process,  is  falsely  taken.  As  merely  that  which  you  cannot 
exhaust  by  counting,  the  Infinite  is,  by  the  hypothesis,  never 
found,  presented  or  completed,  so  long  as  you  simply  count. 
Hence  we  wholly  agree  that  the  Infinite,  just  in  so  far  as  it  is 
viewed  as  indeterminate,  incomplete,  or  merely  endless,  is  not 
rightly  viewed;  and  that  in  so  far  it  is  indeed  unreal.  We 
also  fully  agree  that  Absolute  knowledge  unquestionably 
recognizes,  as  an  object  for  its  own  relatively  abstract  thought, 
a  distinctly  unreal  Infinite,  namely,  the  Infinite  of  the  excluded 
ideal  "  bare  possibilities "  aforesaid.  In  all  this  we  quite 
agree  with  our  opponents,  and  prize  their  insistence  upon  the 
determinateness  of  the  final  truth. 

Nevertheless,  we  shall  perforce  insist  upon  these  theses :  — 

(1)  The  true  Infinite,  both  in  multitude  and  in  organization, 
although  in  one  sense  endless,  and  so  incapable  in  that  sense  of 
being  completely  grasped,  is  in  another  and  precise  sense 
something  perfectly  determinate.     Nor  is  it  a  mere  monoto- 
nous repetition  of  the  same,  over  and  over.     Each  of  its  deter- 
minations has  individuality,  uniqueness,  and  novelty  about  its 
own  nature. 

(2)  This  determinateness  is  a  character  which,  indeed,  in- 
cludes and  involves  the  endlessness  of  an  infinite  series ;  but 
the  mere  endlessness  of  the  series  is  not  its  primary  character, 
being  simply  a  negatively  stated  result  of  the  self -representa- 
tive character  of  the  whole  system. 

(3)  The  endlessness  of  the  series  means  that  by  no  merely 
successive  process  of  counting,  in  God  or  in  man,  is  its  whole- 
ness ever  exhausted. 

(4)  In  consequence,  the  whole  endless  series,  in  so  far  as  it 
is  a  reality,  must  be  present,  as  a  determinate  order,  but  also 
all  at  once,  to  the  Absolute  Experience.     It  is  the  process  of 
successive  counting,  as  such,  that  remains,  to  the  end,  incom- 
plete, so  as  to  imply  that  its  own  possibilities  are  not  yet 
realized.     Hence,  the  recurrent  processes  of  thought  reveal 
eternal  truth  about  the  infinite  constitution  of  real  Being,  — • 
their  everlasting  pursued  Other;  but  themselves, — as  mere 
processes  in  time,  —  they  are  not  that  Other.     Their  true  Other 


SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY  569 

is,  therefore,  that  self-representative  System  of  which  they  are 
at  once  portions,  imitations,  and  expressions. 

(5)  The  Reality  is  such  a  self-represented  and  infinite  sys- 
tem.    And  therein  lies  the  basis  of  its  very  union,  within 
itself  of  the  One  and  the  Many.     For  the  one  purpose  of  self- 
representation  demands  an  infinite  multiplicity  to  express  it; 
while  no  multiplicity  is  reducible  to  unity  except  through 
processes  involving  self-representation. 

(6)  And,  nevertheless,  the  Real  is  exclusive  as  well  as  inclu- 
sive.    On  the  side  of  its  thought  the  Absolute  does  conceive 
a  barely  possible  infinity,   other  than  the  real  infinity,  —  a 
possible  world,  whose  characters,  as  universal  characters,  are 
present  to  the  Absolute,  and  are  known  by  virtue  of  the  fact 
that  the  Absolute  also  thinks.     But  these  possibilities  are  ex- 
cluded by  reason  of  their  conflict  with  the  Absolute  Will. 

(7)  Yet,  in  meaning,  the  infinite  Reality,  as  present,  is  richer 
than  the  infinity  of  bare  possibilities  that  are  excluded.     But 
for  that  very  reason  the  Reality  presented,  in  the  final  and 
determinate  experience  of  the  Absolute,  cannot  be  less  than 
infinitely  wealthy,  both  in  its  content  and  in  its  order.     Its 
unity  in  its  wholeness,  and  its  infinite  variety  in  expression, 
are  both  of  an  individual  character.     The  constituent   indi- 
viduals are  not  "absorbed"  or  " transmuted "  in  the  whole. 
The  whole  is  One  Self;  but  therefore  is  all  its  own  constitu- 
tion equally  necessary  to  its  Selfhood.     Hence  it  is  an  Indi- 
vidual of  Individuals. 

With  less  of  complexity  and,  if  you  please,  with  less  of 
paradox,  no  theory  of  Being  can  be  rendered  coherent.  Our 
present  purpose  is  to  bring  these  various  aspects  of  the  two- 
fold nature  of  Being,  as  Infinite  Being  and  as  Determinate 
Being,  to  light  and  to  definition. 

We  shall  return,  therefore,  to  the  consideration  of  the  main 
points  made  by  our  objectors,  and,  as  we  meet  them  shall  even 
thereby  justify,  without  needing  formally  to  repeat,  our  vari- 
ous theses. 


570  SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY 

III.    The  Infinite  as  Determinate 

The  principal  one  amongst  all  the  traditional  objections  to 
the  Infinite  is,  as  we  have  seen,  the  thought  that  the  Infinite, 
as  such,  is  merely  an  endlessly  sought  or  an  endlessly  incom- 
plete somewhat;  while  the  real,  as  such,  is  very  rightly  to  be 
viewed  as  the  determinate.  Hence,  the  actually  Infinite,  one 
insists,  would  be  at  once  determinate  and  indeterminate,  and 
so  would  be  contradictory. 

Now,  whatever  may  be  said  about  the  actually  Infinite,  we 
have  already  seen  that  the  infinite  of  the  merely  conceptual 
but  valid  type,  the  infinite  of  the  realm  of  mathematical  possi- 
bilities, is  certainly  as  determinate  a  conception  as  any  merely 
universal  idea  can  ever  be,  and,  as  thus  determinate,  involves 
no  contradiction  whatever.  Cling  to  our  Third  Conception  of 
Reality ;  and  then,  indeed,  there  can  be  no  doubt  whatever  that 
the  Infinite  is  real.  For  there  is  no  contradiction,  there  is 
only  a  necessarily  valid  truth  involved  in  saying  that  to  any 
whole  number  r,  however  large,  there  inevitably  does  corre- 
spond one  number,  and  only  one,  which  stands  amongst  all 
numbers  as  the  rth  member  in  the  ordered  series  of  whole 
numbers  that  are  squares,  or  in  the  ordered  series  of  the  cubes, 
or  in  the  ordered  series,  if  you  please,  of  numbers  of  the  form 
of  a100  or  a1000,  where  the  exponent  is  fixed,  but  where  the 
number  that  is  to  be  raised  to  the  power  indicated  takes  suc- 
cessively the  series  of  values,  1,  2,  3,  ...  r.  The  inevitable 
result  is  that  to  every  whole  number  r,  without  a  possible  ex- 
ception, there  corresponds,  in  the  realm  of  validity,  and  cor- 
responds uniquely,  just  that  particular  whole  number  which 
you  get  if  you  raise  r  to  the  second,  third,  or  hundredth,  or 
thousandth  power.  Moreover,  this  ideal  ordering  of  all  the 
whole  numbers,  without  exception,  in  a  one-to-one  relation  (let 
us  say)  to  their  own  thousandth  powers,  is  in  such  wise  pre- 
determined by  the  very  nature  of  number  that,  if  you  under- 
take to  calculate  the  thousandth  power  (let  us  say)  of  the 
number  80,000,000,  your  result  is  in  no  wise  left  to  you,  as  a 
bare  possibility  that  your  private  will  can  capriciously  decide. 


SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY  571 

The  result  is  lawfully  fixed  beforehand  by  the  very  essence  of 
mathematical  validity,  i.e.  by  the  very  expression  of  your  own 
final  Will  in  its  wholeness.  Your  calculation  can  only  bring 
this  result  to  light  in  your  own  private  experience  of  numbers. 
It  is  an  arithmetically  true  result  quite  apart  from  your  instan- 
taneous observation.  Its  triviality,  as  a  mere  matter  for  com- 
putation, is  not  now  in  question.  Its  eternal  validity,  however, 
interests  us.  Every  number,  then,  speaking  in  terms  of  mathe- 
matical validity,  already  has  its  own  thousandth  power,  whether 
you  chance  to  have  observed  or  to  have  computed  that  thou- 
sandth power  or  not.  Yet,  in  any  finite  collection  of  whole 
numbers,  those  which  are  the  thousandth  powers  of  the  whole 
numbers  constitute  at  most  an  incomparably  minute  part  of 
the  whole  collection.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  viewed  with 
reference  to  the  logically  valid  truth  about  all  the  numbers, 
these  powers,  as  a  mere  part  of  the  whole  series  of  whole  num- 
bers, still  occupy  such  a  logically  predetermined  place  that 
they  are  set,  by  their  values,  in  a  one-to-one  relation  to  the 
members  of  the  whole  series ;  so  that  not  a  small  portion,  but 
absolutely  all  of  the  whole  numbers,  have  their  correspondents 
among  the  thousandth  powers.  Now,  all  these  are  facts  of 
thought,  just  as  valid  as  any  conceptual  constructions,  however 
simple,  and  just  as  true  as  that  2  +  2  =  4.  And  by  themselves 
these  truths,  trivial  if  you  please,  are,  in  all  their  wearisome- 
ness,  not  "monstrous"  at  all,  but  simply  the  necessary  conse- 
quences of  an  exact  conception  of  the  nature  of  number. 

"Monstrous,  however,"  so  one  may  reply,  "would  be  the 
assertion  that  in  any  real  world  there  could  be  determinate 
facts  corresponding  to  all  this  merely  ideal  complexity."  On 
the  contrary,  as  we  might  at  once  retort,  it  would  be  monstrous 
if  all  these  truths  were  merely  "  valid, "  in  a  purely  formal  way, 
without  any  correspondent  facts  whatever  in  the  real  world. 
Can  mere  validity  hang  in  the  void?  Must  it  not  possess  a 
determinate  basis? 

The  issue,  then,  is  at  once  the  issue  about  the  Third  Con- 
ception of  Being  in  our  list.  Either  the  truth,  the  world  of 
mere  forms,  can  indeed  hang  in  the  void,  valid,  but  nowhere 


572  SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY 

concrete,  or  else,  just  because  the  infinite  is  valid,  it  has  its 
place,  as  fact,  in  the  determinate  experience  of  the  Absolute. 
At  all  events,  the  Infinite,  in  such  cases  as  have  just  been 
cited,  is  something  quite  as  determinately  valid  as  any  barely 
universal  conception  can  be.  And  unless  it  is  true  that  two 
and  two  would  make  four  in  a  world  where  no  experience  ever 
observed  the  fact,  it  is  true  that  the  infinitely  numerous  prop- 
erties of  the  numbers  need  some  concrete  representation. 

I  grant,  however,  that  these  are  but  preliminary  considera- 
tions. Every  validity,  as  a  bare  universal,  must  be  a  reflec- 
tively abstract  expression  of  a  fact  that  ultimately  exists  in 
individual  embodiment  in  the  Absolute.  Yet,  on  the  other 
hand,  you  cannot  predetermine  the  nature  of  this  individual 
expression  merely  by  pointing  out  that  the  possibilities  in 
question  appear  to  us  endless.  For  the  endlessness  might  be 
one  of  those  matters  of  bare  external  conjunction  of  which  Mr. 
Bradley  so  often  speaks.  Thus  space  appears  to  us  endless. 
I  fully  grant  that  we  are  not  warranted  in  making  any  one 
assertion  about  the  Absolute  view  of  the  meaning  of  our  spatial 
experience,  by  virtue  of  the  mere  fact  that  going  on  and  on 
endlessly  in  space  appears  to  us  possible,  and  that,  conse- 
quently, we  can  define  propositions  that  would  be  valid  if  this 
possibility  is  endlessly  realized  by  the  Absolute.  In  passing 
from  the  Third  to  the  Fourth  Conception  of  Being,  what  we 
did  was  to  see  that  nothing  can  be  valid  unless  a  determinate 
individual  experience  has  present  to  it  all  that  gives  warrant 
for  this  validity.  Because  our  fleeting  experience  never  gives 
such  final  warrant,  we  are  forced  to  seek  for  the  ground  and 
the  basis  of  any  valid  truth  once  recognized  by  us,  and  to  seek 
this  basis  in  a  realm  that  is  Other  than  our  own  experience  as 
it  comes  to  us.  This  Other  is,  finally,  the  Absolute  in  its 
wholeness.  But  we  do  not  assert  that  the  Absolute  realizes 
our  validity  merely  as  we  happen  to  think  it. 

When  we  regard  any  valid  truth  as  implying  a  variety  of  valid 
assertions,  all  for  us  matters  of  conceived  possible  experience, 
we  often  take  the  Many,  thus  conceived  by  us,  as  a  mere  fact, 
an  uncomprehended  "conjunction."  I  agree  altogether  with 


SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY  573 

Mr.  Bradley  that  such  varieties  might  seem,  to  a  higher  experi- 
ence, artificial,  and  that,  as  such,  they  might  be  "  transmuted  " 
even  in  coming  to  their  unity  in  the  higher  view.  For  in  such 
cases  we  never  experience  that  these  varieties  are  self -evidently 
what  they  seem  to  us.  And  our  conception  that  they  are  many 
is  associated  with  a  confession  of  ignorance  as  to  what  they 
are.  A  good  example  of  all  this  is  furnished  by  our  conception 
of  what  our  own  lives,  or  the  course  of  human  history,  would 
have  been,  if  certain  critical  events  had  never  taken  place.1 
What,  in  such  instances,  we  have  on  our  hands  is  an  ignorance 
as  to  the  whole  ground  and  meaning  of  the  critical  events 
themselves.  A  fuller  kno wedge  of  what  they  meant  might 
render  much  of  our  speech  about  the  "possibilities"  in  ques- 
tion obviously  vain. 

Determinate  decisions  "of  the  will  involve  rendering  in- 
valid countless  possibilities  that,  but  for  this  choice,  might 
have  been  entertained  as  valid.  In  such  cases  the  nature 
of  the  rejected  possibilities  is  sufficiently  expressed,  in 
concrete  form,  by  the  will  that  decides,  if  only  it  knows  itself 
as  deciding,  and  is  fully  conscious  of  how  and  why  it  decides. 
That  Absolute  insight  would  mean  absolute  decision,  and  so  a 
refusal  to  get  presented  in  experience  endlessly  numerous  con- 
tents that,  biit  for  the  decision,  would  have  been  possible,  — 
this  I  maintain  as  a  necessary  aspect  of  the  whole  conception 
of  individuality.  Whoever  knows  not  decisions  that  exclude, 
knows  not  Being.  For  apart  from  such  exclusion  of  possibili- 
ties, one  would  face  barely  abstract  universals,  and  would, 
therefore,  still  seek  for  Another.  Our  whole  conception  of 
Being  agrees,  then,  with  Mr.  Bradley's  in  insisting  that  the 
bare  what,  the  idea  as  a  mere  thought,  still  pursuing,  and 
imitatively  characterizing  its  Other,  not  only  does  not  face 
Being  as  Being,  but  can  never,  of  itself,  decide  what  its  own 
final  expression  shall  be.  Thought  must  win  satisfaction  not 
as  mere  Thought,  but  also  as  decisive  Will,  determining  itself 
to  final  expression  in  a  way  that  the  abstract  universals  of 

1  On  such  possibilities,  "counter  to  fact,"  see  again  the  discussion  in 
the  Conception  of  God,  loc.  eft.,  and  in  later  passages  of  the  same  essay. 


574  SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY 

mere  thinking  can  characterize,  but  never  exhaust.  Thus, 
and  thus  only,  can  be  found  that  which  admits  of  no  Other. 
So  far,  then,  it  is  indeed  true  that  nothing  is  proved  real 
merely  by  proving  its  abstract  consistency  as  a  mere  idea  taken 
apart  from  the  rest  of  the  world. 

Or,  again,  the  realm  of  validity  is  not  exhausted  by  pre- 
sented fact  in  the  way  suggested  by  one  of  Amadeus  Hoff- 
man's most  horrible  fancies  (I  believe  in  the  Elixiere  des 
Teufels),  according  to  which  a  hero,  persistently  beset  by  a 
double,  always  finds  that,  whenever  he,  in  his  relative  strength, 
resists  a  great  temptation,  and  avoids  a  crime,  this  miserable 
double,  whom  he  all  the  while  vaguely  takes  to  be  in  a  way 
himself,  appears,  —  pale,  wretched,  fate-driven,  —  and  does, 
or  at  least  attempts,  in  very  fact,  the  deed  that  the  hero  had 
rejected.  No;  whoever  knows  Being,  finds  himself  satisfied 
in  the  presence  of  a  will  fulfilled,  and  needs  no  fate-driven 
other  Self,  no  outcast  double,  to  realize  for  him  the  possibili- 
ties whose  validity  he  rejects.  For  in  rejecting,  he  wins. 
And  Being  is  a  destruction  as  well  as  an  accomplishment  of 
Experience. 

Upon  all  this  I  have  elsewhere  insisted.  That  the  very 
essence  of  individuality  is  a  Will  that  permits  no  Other  to 
take  the  place  of  this  fulfilment,  — a  Love  that  finds  in  this 
wholeness  of  life  its  own,  —  I  have  pointed  out  in  an  argument 
that  the  Tenth  Lecture  of  the  present  course  has  merely  sum- 
marized.1 And  therefore  I  am  perfectly  prepared  to  admit 
that  when  we  define  as  valid,  in  the  realm  of  mathematical 
truth,  an  infinite  wealth  of  ideal  forms,  we  need  not,  on  that 
account  alone,  and  apart  from  other  reasons,  declare  that  the 
Absolute  Life  realizes  these  forms  in  their  variety  as  defined 
by  us.  Their  true  meaning  it  must  somehow  get  present  to 
itself,  —  otherwise  it  would  face  Another  of  which  it  was  essen- 
tially ignorant.  But  its  realization  of  their  meaning  may  well 
imply  an  exclusion  of  their  variety,  just  in  so  far  as  that 
variety,  when  conceived  by  us,  expresses  our  ignorance  of 

1  See  the  Conception  of  God,  Supplementary  Essay,  Part  III,  espe- 
cially pp.  247-270.  Compare  Part  IV,  pp.  303-315. 


SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY  575 

what  principle  of  multiplicity  is  here  at  work,  of  how  the 
One  and  the  Many  here  concerned  are  related,  and  of  what 
decision  of  Will  would  give  these  forms  a  concrete  meaning  in 
the  universal  life. 

It  remains,  then,  returning  to  the  typical  case  of  the  num- 
bers, to  see  in  what  sense  a  determinate  expression  of  their 
whole  meaning  can  be  found  in  the  life  of  a  Will  that  fulfils 
itself  through  exclusive  decisions,  but  that  does  not  ignore  any 
genuinely  significant  aspect  of  the  truth.  For  our  Absolute 
is  not  in  such  wise  exclusive  of  content  as  to  impoverish  its 
wealth  of  ideal  characters;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  it  is  not  in 
such  wise  inclusive  of  bare  possibilities  as  to  oppose  to  what- 
ever fact  it  chooses  as  its  own,  the  fatal  Other  deed  of  Amadeus 
Hoffman's  double-willed  and  distracted  hero. 

And  here,  of  course,  an  opponent  of  the  actual  Infinite  will  be 
ready  with  the  very  common  observation  that  the  numbers  are 
indeed,  apart  from  the  concrete  objects  numbered,  of  a  trivial 
validity.  "In  a  life,"  he  may  say,  "in  a  world  of  decisions 
and  of  concrete  values,  a  barren  contemplation  of  the  proper- 
ties of  the  numbers  can  have  but  a  narrow  place.  Hence,  no 
fulfilment  of  the  hopeless  task  of  wandering  from  number  to 
number  need  be  expected  as  a  part  of  the  Absolute  life." 

Moreover,  such  an  objector  will  insist  that  all  these  Ketten 
involve  mere  repetition  of  the  same  sort  of  experience  over 
and  over.  "  To  carry  such  repetition  to  the  infinite  end,  — 
what  purpose,"  he  will  say,  "can  such  an  ideal  fulfil?"  The 
individual  fulfilment  of  the  meaning  of  the  number-series,  in 
the  final  view,  may  well,  then,  take  the  form  of  knowing  that 
there  are  indeed  numbers,  that  they  are  made  in  a  certain  way, 
that  the  plan  of  their  order  has  a  particular  type,  and  that 
this  type  is  exemplified  thus  and  thus  by  a  comparatively  few 
concretely  presented  ideas  of  whole  numbers.  Otherwise, 
the  numbers  may  be  left  as  unrealized  as  are  those  other 
excluded  possibilities  of  the  Will  exemplified. 

But  against  this  view  one  has  next  to  point  out  that,  ob- 
served a  little  more  closely,  even  the  numbers  have  characters 
not  reducible  to  any  limited  collection  of  universal  types. 


576  SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY 

They  do  not  prove  to  be  a  monotonous  series  of  contents, 
involving  mere  repetition  of  the  same  ideas.  On  the  contrary, 
to  know  them  at  all  well,  is  to  find  in  them  properties  involv- 
ing the  most  varied  and  novel  features,  as  you  pass  from  num- 
ber to  number,  or  bring  into  synthesis  various  selected  groups 
of  numbers.  Consider,  for  instance,  the  prime  numbers. 
Distributed  through  the  number-series  in  ways  that  are 
indeed  capable  of  partial  definition  through  general  formulas, 
they  still  conform  to  no  single  known  principle  that  enables 
us  to  determine,  a  priori,  and  in  merely  universal  terms, 
exactly  what  and  where  each  prime  shall  be.  They  have 
been  discovered  by  an  essentially  empirical  process  which  has 
now  been  extended,  by  the  tabulators  of  the  prime  numbers, 
far  into  the  millions.  Yet  the  process  much  resembles  any 
other  empirical  process.  Its  results  are  reported  by  the  tabu- 
lators as  the  astronomers  catalogue  the  stars.  The  primes 
have,  as  it  were,  relatively  individual  characters,1  which  can- 
not be  reduced  to  any  barren  repetition  of  the  same  thing 
over  and  over.  One  may  call  them  uninteresting.  But  one 
must  not  judge  the  truth  by  one's  private  dislike  of  mathe- 
matics, just  as,  of  course,  one  must  not  exaggerate  the  im- 
portance of  mere  forms.  Here,  then,  is  one  instance  of  endless 
novelty  within  the  number-series. 

But  the  real  question  is,  How  shall  the  genuine  meaning  of 
all  this  series  of  truths  be  in  any  way  grasped,  unless  the 
insight  which  grasps  is  adequate  to  the  endless  wealth  of  novel, 
and  relatively  individual  truth  that  the  various  numbers  pre- 
sent as  one  passes  on  in  the  series?  For  the  will  cannot  con- 
sciously decide  against  the  further  realization  of  certain  types 
of  possibility,  unless  it  clearly  knows  their  value.  And  this 
it  must  know  in  exhaustive,  even  if  ideal  and  abstractly  uni- 
versal terms.  Nobody  can  fairly  tell  what  value  in  life 
numerical  truth  may  possess,  unless  he  first  knows  that  truth. 
And  the  numbers  whose  ordered  rationality  is,  for  us  men, 
the  very  basis  of  our  exact  science,  show  a  wealth  of  truth 

1  Of  course  they  are  in  no  sense  true  individuals,  but  taken  as  members 
of  their  series,  they  have  relatively  unique  features. 


SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY  577 

that  we  find  more  and  more  baffling  the  further  we  go.  The 
"  perfect  numbers  "  form  a  series  that  may  be  as  full  of  inter- 
est, for  all  that  I  know,  as  the  primes.  The  properties  of 
the  "Arithmetical  Triangle"  are  linked  in  the  most  unex- 
pected fashion  with  the  laws  of  our  statistical  science,  and 
with  the  nature  of  certain  orderly  combinations  of  vast  im- 
portance in  other  branches  of  mathematical  inquiry.  Count- 
less other  combinations  of  numbers  form  topics,  not  only 
of  numerous  well-known  plays  and  puzzles,  but  of  scientific 
investigations  whose  character  is  actually  adventurous,  —  so 
arduous  is  their  course,  and  so  full  of  unexpected  bearings 
upon  other  branches  of  knowledge  has  been  their  outcome. 
Nobody  amongst  us  can  pretend  to  fathom  the  value  for  con- 
crete science,  and  for  life,  that  has  yet  to  be  derived  from 
advances  in  the  Theory  of  Numbers. 

These,  then,  are  mere  hints  of  the  inexhaustible  properties 
of  the  number-series.  I  speak  still  as  layman;  but  I  am 
convinced  that  these  significant  properties  are  quite  as  inex- 
haustible as  the  number-series  itself.  Now,  the  value  of  such 
properties  you  can  never  tell  until  you  see  what  they  are. 
Their  meaning  in  the  life  of  reason  can  only  be  estimated 
when  they  are  present.  Hence,  you  can  never  wisely  decide 
not  to  know  them  until  you  have  first  known  them.  But  they 
are  not  to  be  known  merely  as  the  endless  repetitions  of  the 
same  over  and  over.  Hence  it  is  wholly  vain  to  say,  "  Num- 
bers come  from  counting,  and  counting  is  vain  repetition  of 
the  same  over  and  over."  Whoever  views  the  numbers  merely 
thus,  knows  not  whereof  he  speaks.  It  is  not  "counting, 
with  nothing  to  count " ;  it  is  finding  what  Order  means,  that 
is  the  task  of  a  true  Theory  of  Numbers. 

As  a  fact,  then,  the  number-series  in  its  wholeness  seems 
to  be  a  realm  not  only  of  inexhaustible  truth,  but  of  a  truth 
that  possesses  an  everywhere  relatively  individual  type.  And 
its  validity  has  relations  that  we,  at  present,  but  imperfectly 
know,  and  a  rational  value  that  appears  to  be  fundamental  in 
every  orderly  inquiry. 

We  can,  then,  neither  assert  that  to  all  the  varieties  which 

Zr 


578  SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY 

our  thought  may  chance  to  conceive  as  possible,  there  corre- 
spond just  as  many  final  facts  for  an  Absolute  Experience ;  nor 
yet  can  we,  on  the  other  hand,  exclude  from  concrete  presenta- 
tion, as  final  facts,  such  wholes  as  include  an  infinite  series, 
merely  because,  for  us,  if  we  do  not  take  due  account  of  mathe- 
matical truth,  the  series  seems  to  involve  the  empty  repetition 
of  "one  more"  and  "one  more."  For,  as  Poincare"  has  so 
finely  pointed  out,  in  the  article  before  cited,  it  is  precisely  the 
"  reasoning  by  recurrence  "  which  is,  in  mathematics,  the  end- 
less source  of  new  results.  Hereby,  in  the  combination  of 
his  previous  results  for  the  sake  of  new  insight,  the  mathema- 
tician is  preserved  from  mere  "identities,"  and  gets  novelties. 
The  "reasoning  by  recurrence,"  however,  is  that  form  of 
reasoning  whereby  one  shows  that  if  a  given  truth  holds  in  n 
cases,  it  holds  for  the  n  +  1st  case,  and  so  for  all  cases.  Such 
processes  of  passing  to  "  one  more  "  instance  of  a  given  type, 
are  processes  not  of  barren  repetition,  but  of  genuine  progress 
to  higher  stages  of  knowledge. 

Precisely  so  it  is,  too,  if  one  takes  account  of  that  other 
aspect  of  ordered  series  which  it  has  been  one  principal  pur- 
pose of  this  paper  to  emphasize.  The  numbers  have  interested 
us,  not  from  any  Pythagorean  bias,  but  because  their  Order  is 
the  expression,  not  only  of  a  profoundly  significant  aspect  of 
all  law  in  the  world,  but  of  the  very  essence  of  Selfhood,  when 
formally  viewed.  Now  reflective  selfhood,  taken  merely  as 
the  abstract  series,  /  know,  and  /  know  that  I  know,  etc.,  ap- 
pears to  be  a  vain  repetition  of  the  same  over  and  over.  But 
this  it  appears  merely  if  you  neglect  the  concrete  content  which 
every  new  reflection,  when  taken  in  synthesis  with  previous 
reflections,  inevitably  implies  in  case  of  every  living  subject- 
matter.  A  life  that  knows  not  itself  differs  from  the  same 
life  conscious  of  itself,  by  lacking  precisely  the  feature  that 
distinguishes  rational  morality  alike  from  innocence  and  from 
brutish  naivete".  A  knowledge  that  is  self-possessed  differs 
from  an  unreflective  type  of  consciousness  by  having  all  the 
marks  that  separate  insight  from  blind  faith. 

"Thus  we  see,"  says  Spinoza,  in  a  most  critical  passage  of 


SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY  579 

his  Ethics,1  "that  the  infinite  essence  and  the  eternity  of  God 
are  known  to  all.  .  .  .  That  men  have  not  an  equally  clear 
cognition  of  God  as  they  have  of  ordinary  abstract  ideas,  is 
due  to  the  fact  that  God  cannot  be  imagined,  as  bodies  are 
imagined,  and  that  they  have  associated  the  name  of  God  with 
the  images  of  things  that  they  are  accustomed  to  see."  All 
the  ignorance  and  unwisdom  whose  consequences  Spinoza  sets 
forth  in  the  Third  and  Fourth  Parts  of  his  Ethics,  are  thus 
declared,  in  this  passage,  to  be  due  to  the  failure  of  the  ordi- 
nary human  mind  to  reflect  upon,  and  to  observe,  an  idea  of 
the  truth,  i.e.  of  God,  which  it  still  always  possesses,  and 
which  not  the  least  of  minds  can  really  be  without.  For  God's 
essence  is  "  equally  in  the  part  and  in  the  whole."  Thus  vast, 
then,  is  the  difference  in  our  whole  view  of  ourselves  and  of 
the  universe  which  is  to  be  the  outcome  of  mere  self-conscious- 
ness. Yet  the  same  Spinoza,  in  a  passage  not  long  since  cited 
in  our  notes,  can  assert  that  whoever  has  a  true  idea  knows  that 
he  has  it,  and  in  a  parallel  passage  can  even  make  light  of  all 
reflective  insight,  as  a  useless  addition  to  one's  true  ideas. 

This  really  marvellous  vacillation  of  Spinoza,  as  regards  the 
central  importance  of  self -consciousness  in  the  whole  life  of 
man  and  of  the  universe,  is  full  of  lessons  as  to  the  fallacy  of 
ignoring  the  positive  meaning  of  reflective  insight.  This 
positive  meaning  once  admitted,  it  is  impossible  to  assert  that 
any  limited  series  of  reflective  acts  can  exhaust  the  self-repre- 
sentative significance  of  any  concrete  life.  The  properties  of 
the  number-series,  the  inexhaustible  wealth  of  the  concept  of 
Order,  and  the  fecundity  of  the  mathematical  "conclusion 
from  n  to  71  -f 1,"  are  mere  hints  of  what  a  reflective  series 
implies,  and  of  the  infinity  of  every  genuine  reflective  series. 
For,  on  the  one  hand,  we  have  now  sufficiently  seen  that  the 
fecundity  in  question  is  due  to  the  essentially  reflective  char- 
acter of  the  process  whereby  the  conclusion  from  n  to  n-f  1 
is  justified.1  On  the  other  hand,  our  argument  as  to  the 

1  Part  U,  Prop.  47,  Scholium. 

2  Dedekiud,  op.  cit.,  p.  15,  §§  4,  69,  has  given  a  formal  proof  of  the 
validity  of  the  "conclusion  from  n  to  n  +  1."     His  proof,  an  extraordi- 


580  SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY 

universal  fecundity  of  reflective  processes,  as  merely  illus- 
trated by  the  wealth  of  the  number-forms,  is  an  argument  a 
fortiori. 

It  is  easy,  as  we  have  seen,  to  make  light  of  mere  numbers 
because  they  are  so  formal,  and  beecause  one  wearies  of  mathe- 
matics. But  our  present  case  is  simply  this :  Of  course  the 
numbers,  taken  in  abstract  divorce  from  life,  are  mere  forms. 
But  if  in  the  bare  skeleton  of  selfhood,  if  in  the  dry  bones  of 
that  museum  of  mere  orderliness,  the  arithmetical  series,  —  if, 
even  here,  we  find  such  an  endless  wealth  of  relatively  unique 
results  of  each  new  act  of  reflection,  in  case  that  act  is  taken 
in  synthesis  with  the  foregoing  acts,  —  what  may  not  be,  what 
must  be,  the  wealth  of  meaning  involved  in  a  reflective  series 
whose  basis  is  a  concrete  life,  whose  reflections  give  this  life  at 
each  stage  new  insight  into  itself,  and  whose  syntheses  with 
all  foregoing  acts  of  reflection  are  themselves,  if  temporally 
viewed,  as  it  were,  new  acts  in  the  drama  of  this  life?  If  such 
a  life  is  to  be  present  totum  simul  to  the  Absolute,  how  shall 
not  the  results  of  endless  acts  of  reflection,  each  of  an  indi- 
vidual meaning,  but  all  given,  at  one  stroke,  as  an  expression 
of  the  single  purpose  to  reflect  and  to  be  self-possessed,  — 
how  shall  all  these  facts  not  appear  as  elements  in  the  unity  of 
the  whole,  elements  neither  "transmuted"  nor  "suppressed," 
but  comprehended  in  their  organic  unity  ? 

Unless  the  Absolute  is  a  Self,  and  that  concretely  and  ex- 
plicitly, it  is  no  Absolute  at  all.  And  unless  it  exhausts  an 
infinity,  in  its  presentations,  it  cannot  be  a  Self.  That  even 
in  thus  exhausting  it  also  excludes  from  itself  the  infinity 
that  it  wills  to  exclude,  I  equally  insist.  But  I  also  maintain 
that  this  exclusion  can  only  be  based  upon  insight,  and  that, 
unless  the  positive  infinity  is  present,  as  the  self-represented 
whole  that  is  accepted,  the  exclusion  is  blind,  and  our  con- 
ception of  Being  lapses  into  mere  Realism.  But  even  Real- 

narily  brilliant  feat  of  logical  analysis,  has  been  exhaustively  analyzed,  by 
Schroeder,  in  the  passage  before  cited.  It  involves  a  peculiarly  subtle 
reflection  upon  what  the  process  of  self-representation  implies,  — a  reflec- 
tion as  easy  to  ignore  as  it  is  important  to  bring  to  clear  light. 


SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY  581 

ism,  as  we  have  seen,  is  equally  committed  to  the  actually 
infinite.1 

IV.    The  Infinite  as  a  Totality 

And  yet  one  will  persistently  retort,  "  Your  idea  of  the 
complete  exhaustion  of  what  you  all  the  while  declare  to  be, 
as  infinite,  an  inexhaustible  series,  is  still  a  plain  contra- 
diction." 

I  reply  that  I  am  anxious  to  report  the  facts,  as  one  finds  them 
whenever  one  has  to  deal  with  any  endless  Kette.  The  facts  are 
these :  (1)  This  series,  if  real,  is  inexhaustible  by  any  process 
of  successive  procedure,  whereby  one  passes  from  one  member 
to  the  next.  It  is  then  expressly  a  series  with  no  last  term. 
Try  to  go  through  it  from  first  to  last,  and  the  process  can 
never  be  completed.  Now  this  negative  character  of  the 
series,  if  it  is  real,  is  as  true  for  the  Absolute  as  for  a  boy  at 
school.  In  this  sense,  namely,  viewed  as  a  succession,  since  the 
series  has  no  last  term,  its  last  term  cannot  be  found  by  God 
or  man,  and  does  not  exist.  In  this  sense,  too,  any  effort  to 

1  As  for  my  reasons  for  speaking  of  an  Absolute  Will  at  all,  despite  Mr. 
Bradley's  repeated  objections,  I  must  insist  that  we  have  precisely  the 
same  reasons  for  attributing  a  generalized  type  of  Will  to  the  Absolute 
that  we  have  for  attributing  to  it  Experience.  And  the  grounds  for  this 
conclusion  have  been  stated  at  length  in  Lecture  VII  of  the  foregoing 
series.  My  insistence  means  mere  report  of  the  facts,  in  the  best  acces- 
sible language.  To  say  that  the  Absolute  has  or  is  Will,  is  simply  to  say 
that  it  knows  its  object,  namely  itself  in  its  wholeness,  as  this  and  no 
other,  despite  the  fact  that  the  "mere"  Thought,  which  it  also  possesses, 
consists,  as  abstract  thought,  in  defining  such  an  Other,  and  because  of 
the  fact  that  this  and  no  other  satisfies  or  fulfils  the  complete  internal 
meaning  of  the  Absolute  itself.  That  Thought,  Will,  and  Experience  are 
not  "transmuted"  but  concretely  present  from  the  Absolute  point  of 
view,  is  a  thesis  merely  equivalent  to  saying  that  the  Absolute  consciously 
views  itself  as  the  immediately  given  fulfilment  of  purpose  in  this  and  no 
other  life.  As  immediately  given  fact,  the  life  is  Experience.  In  so  far 
as  the  purpose  is  distinguished  from  its  fulfilment,  one  has  an  Idea  seek- 
ing its  Other.  And  this  is  Thought.  In  so  far  as  this  and  no  other  life 
fulfils  purpose,  we  have  Will.  All  these  are  concretely  distinguished 
aspects  of  the  fact,  if  the  Absolute  is  a  Self,  and  views  itself  as  such.  If 
this  is  not  true,  the  Absolute  is  less  than  nothing. 


582  SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY 

complete  the  series  will  fail.  In  this  sense,  therefore,  the 
series  indeed  has  no  "totality,"  because  it  needs  none.  In 
this  sense,  finally,  it  would  indeed  be  contradictory  to  speak 
of  it  as  a  totality.  And  all  this  is  admitted,  and  need  not  be 
further  illustrated. 

(2)  The  sense  in  which  the  series  is  a  totality  is,  however, 
if  the  series  is  real,  not  at  all  the  sense  in  which  it  merely  has 
no  last  member.  The  series  is  not  to  be  exhausted  in  the 
sense  in  which  it  is  indeed  inexhaustible.  But  you  may  and 
must  take  it  otherwise.  The  sense  in  which  it  is  a  totality 
expressly  depends  upon  that  concept  of  totum  simwl  which  I 
have  everywhere  in  this  discussion  emphasized.  To  grasp  this 
aspect  of  the  case,  you  must  view  it  in  two  stages.  Take  the 
series  then  first  as  a  purely  conceptual  entity,  as  a  mere  idea, 
or  "  bare  possibility."  The  one  purpose  of  the  perfect  internal 
self-representation  of  any  system  of  elements  in  the  fashion, 
and  according  to  the  type  of  self-representation,  here  in  ques- 
tion, defines,  for  any  Kette  formed  upon  the  basis  of  that 
purpose,  all  of  the  ideal  objects  that  are  to  belong  to  the  Kette. 
And  this  purpose  defines  them  all  at  once,  as  we  saw  in  dealing 
with  fj  (n),  and  the  rest  of  those  series  that  are  involved  in  any 
Kette.  Now  this  endless  wealth  of  detail  is  defined  at  one  stroke, 
so  that  it  is  henceforth  eternally  predetermined,  as  a  valid 
truth,  precisely  what  does  and  what  does  not  belong  to  that 
Kette.  And  the  various  series  and  this  Kette  are  here  one  and 
the  same  thing.  To  find  whether  this  or  that  element  belongs 
to  the  Kette,  may  or  may  not  involve,  for  you,  a  long  time.  It 
will  involve  for  you  succession,  processes  of  counting,  and 
much  more  of  the  sort  indefinitely.  This,  however,  is  due  to 
your  fortune  as  a  human  observer.  But  the  definition  of  the 
series  has  predetermined  at  one  stroke  all  the  results  that  you 
thus,  taking  them  in  succession,  can  never  exhaust,  and  has 
predetermined  these  results  as  a  fixed  Order,  wherein  every 
element  has  its  precise  place,  next  after  a  previous  element,  next 
before  a  subsequent  one.  As  for  the  before  and  after,  in  this 
Order,  they,  too,  are  ideally  predetermined,  not  as  themselves 
successions,  but  as  valid  and  simultaneous  relations.  That  a 


SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY  583 

come  first,  b  second,  etc.,  is  determined  by  the  definition,  all  at 
once.  The  definition  of  the  Kette  does  not,  however,  like  your 
acts  in  counting,  first  determine  a  and  afterwards  b.  In  the 
truly  valid  series  it  is  the  a  and  b  that  are  simultaneously  first 
and  next.  You  must  not  confuse  then  the  eternally  valid  and 
simultaneously  predetermined  aspects  of  this  order  with  the 
temporal  succession  of  your  verifications  of  the  order. 

So  far,  then,  you  have  taken  the  series  as  a  valid  Order, 
whose  ideal  totality  lies  in  the  singleness  of  a  plan  that  it  is 
supposed  to  express.  And  now  comes  the  second  stage  of  the 
process  of  defining  our  Kette  as  real.  Here  is  indeed  the  deci- 
sive step.  All  the  members  of  the  series  are  at  once  validly 
predetermined.  That  we  have  seen.  Whatever  can  be  pre- 
cisely defined,  however,  can  be  supposed  immediately  given. 
So  now  simply  suppose  that  the  members  are  all  seen,  experi- 
enced, presented,  not  as  they  follow  one  after  another,  in  your 
successive  apperception  of  a  few  of  them,  but  precisely  as  the  defi- 
nition predetermines  them,  namely,  all  at  once.  Hereupon  .you 
define  the  series  as  a  fact,  not  merely  valid,  but  presented. 
And  so  to  define  it  is  to  define  it  as  actually  infinite. 

And  now  I  challenge  you:  "Where  is  the  contradiction  in 
this  conception  of  the  presented  infinite  totality  ?  "  Try  to 
point  out  the  precise  place  of  the  contradictory  element  in  the 
system  as  defined. 

You  may  reply:  "The  contradiction  lies  here:  That  the 
series  has  no  last  term  is  admitted;  yet  if  all  its  terms  are 
present,  the  series  must  be  completely  presented.  But  a  com- 
pleted and  ordered  series  must  have  a  last  term.  How  other- 
wise should  it  be  completed  ?  " 

I  rejoin:  There  is  finality  and  finality,  completion  and  com- 
pletion. The  sort  of  finality  possessed  by  the  series  is  ex- 
pressly of  one  sort,  and  not  of  another.  By  hypothesis  the 
series  is  not  in  such  wise  completely  presented  that  its  last 
term  is  seen.  For  it  has  indeed  no  last  term.  But  it  is,  by 
hypothesis,  so  presented  that  all  the  terms,  precisely  as  the 
single  purpose  of  the  definition  demands  them,  are  present. 
The  definition  was  not  self-contradictory  in  demanding  them 


584  SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY 

as  its  ideal  fulfilment.  How  should  the  presentation  be- 
come contradictory  by  merely  showing  what  the  consistent 
definition  had  called  for  ?  And  now  in  no  other  sense  is 
the  series,  as  presented,  complete)  than  in  the  one  sense  of 
showing,  in  the  supposed  experience,  all  of  its  own  ideally 
defined  members.  It  is  not  complete  in  having  any  closing 
term. 

Your  reply  to  this  statement  will  doubtless  at  last  appeal  to 
the  decisive  consideration  regarding  the  nature  of  any  indi- 
vidual fact  of  Being.  You  will  say :  "  But  the  determinate 
presentation  of  a  series  of  facts  involves  precisely  that  sort  of 
completion  of  the  series  which  makes  it  possess  a  last  member. 
For  the  series,  if  given,  is  an  Individual  Whole,  presented  as 
such  a  complex  individual  in  experience  ;  and  as  an  individual, 
the  series  needs  precise  limits.  As  it  has  a  first,  so  then,  if 
completely  individuated,  it  must  be  finished  by  a  last  member. 
Otherwise  it  would  lack  the  determination  necessary  to  dis- 
tinguish an  Individual  Being  from  a  general  idea." 1 

If  the  objection  be  thus  stated,  it  raises  afresh  the  whole 
question :  What  is  an  individual  fact  of  experience  ?  What 
is  an  individual  whole  in  experience  ?  Now  I  have  set  forth 
in  the  foregoing  lectures  (see  Lectures  VII  and  X),  and  have 
still  more  minutely  developed  elsewhere,2  a  thesis  about  in- 
dividuality whose  relative  novelty  in  the  discussion  of  that 
topic,  and  whose  special  importance  with  regard  to  the  issue 
about  the  determinateness  of  the  Infinite,  I  must  here  insist 
upon.  That  every  individual  Being  is  determinate,  I  fully  main- 
tain. But  how  and  upon  what  basis  does  such  determination 
rest  ?  When,  and  upon  what  ground,  could  one  say  :  /  have 
seen  an  individual  whole  ?  Never,  I  must  insist,  upon  the  ground 
that  one  has  seen  a  group  of  facts  with  a  sharply  marked 
boundary,  or  with  a  definite  localization  in  space  or  in  time, 

1  Here,  as  I  believe,  is  the  deepest  ground  for  that  Aristotelian  objec- 
tion to  the  Infinite  as  "  no  totality,"  which  we  have  now  so  often  met. 
The  whole  question,  then,  is  as  to  the  true  essence  of  Individuality. 

8  Conception  of  God,  Part  III  of  the  Supplementary  Essay  of  that 
work.  See  also  ibid,  p.  331 :  "  Chasms  do  not  individuate." 


SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY  585 

or  with  any  temporal  or  spatial  terminus.1  A  finished  series 
of  data  simply  does  not  constitute  an  individual  whole  merely 
by  becoming  finished.  It  is  perfectly  true  that  such  a  finished 
whole,  with  its  boundary,  its  last  term,  or  what  limit  you  will, 
may  be  viewed  and  rightly  viewed,  as  an  individual ;  but  only 
for  reasons  which  lie  far  deeper  than  its  mere  possession  of 
limits,  and  which,  in  their  turn,  might  be  present  if  such  limits 
were  quite  undiscoverable.  If  you  insist  that  only  such  limited 
wholes  are  ever  viewed  by  us  men  as  individual  wholes,  I 
retort  that  we  men  have  never  experienced  the  direct  presence 
of  any  individual  whole  whatever.  For  us,  individuals  are 
primarily  the  objects  presupposed,  but  never  directly  observed, 
by  love  and  by  its  related  passions, — in  brief,  by  the  exclusive 
affections  which  give  life  all  its  truest  interests.  As  we  asso- 
ciate these  affections  with  those  contents  of  experience  whose 
empirical  limits  we  also  experience  as  essential  to  their  form, 
the  spatially  or  numerically  boundless  comes  to  seem  (as  it 
especially  seemed  to  the  Greek),  the  essentially  formless,  and 
hence  unindividuated  realm,  where  chaos  reigns. 

But  such  mere  prejudices  of  our  ordinary  apprehension 
vanish,  if  we  look  more  closely  at  what  individual  wholeness 
means.  Never  presented  in  our  human  experience,  individual- 
ity is  the  most  characteristic  feature  of  Being.  Its  true  defini- 
tion, however,  implies  three  features,  no  one  of  which  has  any 
necessary  connection  with  last  terms,  or  with  ends,  or  with  any 
other  such  accidents  of  ordinary  sense  perception,  and  of  the 
temporal  enumeration  of  details.  These  three  features  are  as 
follows :  First,  an  individual  whole  must  conform  to  an  ideal 
definition,  which  is  precise,  and  free  from  ambiguity,  so  that  if 
you  know  this  individual  type,  you  know  in  advance  precisely 
what  kind  of  fact  belongs  to  the  defined  whole,  and  in  what 
way.  Secondly,  the  individual  whole  must  embody  this  type  in  the 
form  of  immediate  experience.  And  thirdly,  the  individual  whole 
must  so  embody  the  type  that  no  other  embodiment  would  meet 
precisely  the  purpose,  the  Will,  fulfilled  by  this  embodiment. 

1  See,  as  against  the  theory  of  space  and  time  as  principles  of  individu- 
ation,  the  Conception  of  God,  p.  260,  sqq. 


586  SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY 

It  is  the  third  of  these  features  that  is  the  really  decisive  one. 
The  satisfied  Will,  as  such,  is  the  sole  Principle  of  Individua- 
tion.  This  is  our  theory  of  individuality.  Here  it  comes  to 
our  aid. 

For  wherever  in  the  universe  these  three  conditions  are 
together  fulfilled,  determinate  individual  wholeness  gets  pre- 
sented. In  our  human  experience  their  union,  as  a  fact,  is 
only  postulated,  and  never  found  present,  in  the  objects  which 
constitute  our  empirical  world.  Hence  in  vain  do  you  choose 
empirical  series  such  as  have  last  terms,  and  say,  "  Lo !  these 
are  typical  individual  wholes.  If  the  Absolute  sees  individual- 
ity, in  any  collection  of  facts,  he  sees  it  as  of  this  determinate 
type."  On  the  contrary,  as  we  men  observe  these  things,  they 
appear  to  us  to  be  individuals,  solely  because  we  presuppose 
our  own  individuality  as  Selves,  and  then,  in  the  light  of  this 
presupposition,  regard  these  serial  acts  of  ours  as  individual 
wholes,  merely  because  in  them  we  have  found  a  relative  satis- 
faction of  a  purpose. 

That  finite  series  are  individual  wholes  at  all,  is  therefore 
itself  a  presupposition  —  never  a  datum.  I  take  myself  to  be 
an  individual  Self,  whose  acts,  as  my  own,  are  unique  with  the 
assumed  uniqueness  of  my  own  purposes.  Any  one  of  the 
various  series  of  iny  acts  which  attains,  for  the  moment,  its 
relative  goal,  is  thereby  the  more  marked  as  my  own,  and  as 
one.  But  it  is  not  directly  experienced  as  any  individual  fact 
of  Being  at  all,  and  that  for  the  reason  set  forth  in  our  seventh 
lecture.  That  we  are  individuals  is  true,  and  that  our  finite 
series  of  acts  have  their  own  place  in  Being  is  also  true.  But 
their  finitude  has  only  accidental  relations  to  their  individuality. 

But  now,  in  case  of  such  a  Kette  as  we  are  supposing  real, 
what  is  lacking  to  constitute  it  a  determinate  whole  ?  It  has 
ideal  totality.  For  a  single  ideal  purpose  defines  the  type  of 
all  facts  that  shall  belong  to  it,  and  distinguishes  them  from 
facts  of  all  other  types,  and  predetermines  their  order,  assign- 
ing to  every  element  its  ideal  place.  We  suppose  now  an 
experience  embodying  all  these  elements  in  such  wise  that 
immediacy  and  idea  completely  fuse,  so  that  what  is  here 


SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY  587 

conceived  is  also  given.  We  finally  suppose  this  to  be  such 
an  experience,  for  the  Self  whose  Kette  this  is,  that  in  possess- 
ing this  series  he  views  himself  as  this  Being  and  no  other. 
Now  this  last  feature  of  itself  constitutes  determinateness. 
To  demand  that  the  series  should  have  its  end,  temporal  or 
spatial,  is  to  mistake  wholly  the  nature  of  individuality  ;  is 
to  overlook  the  primacy  of  the  decisive  Will  as  the  sole  beget- 
ter of  individuality ;  and  is  to  apply  to  the  Absolute  a  char- 
acter derived  from  certain  experiences  of  ours  which  we  merely 
view  as  individual  experiences  in  the  light  of  a  postulate, 
while,  for  this  very  postulate,  only  the  Absolute  itself  can 
furnish  the  adequate  warrant  and  realization. 

Our  own  definition  of  individuality  then,  by  freeing  us  from 
bondage  to  mere  temporal  and  spatial  limits,  leaves  us  free  to 
regard  as  determinate  and  as  real  an  experience  that  contains, 
and  that  does  not  merely  "  absorb  "  a  wealth  of  detail  which  in 
itself  is  endless.  In  so  far  as  this  wealth  is  endless,  it  does 
indeed  force  every  process  of  successive  synthesis  to  remain 
unfinished ;  and  therefore,  in  so  far  as  you  merely  count  the 
successive  steps,  you  shall  never  find  what  makes  the  whole 
determinate.  There  is  indeed  no  infinite  number  belonging  to, 
or  terminating,  the  series  of  whole  numbers.  All  whole 
numbers  are  finite.  It  is  the  totality  of  the  whole  numbers 
that  constitutes  an  infinite  multitude.  But  the  determinate- 
ness  of  this  infinite  whole  is  given,  not  when  the  last  whole 
number  is  counted  (for  that  indeed  would  be  self-contradic- 
tory), but  when  the  completely  conscious  Self  knows  itself  as 
this  Being,  and  no  other.  And  this  it  knows  not  when  it  per- 
forms its  last  act,  but  when  it  views  its  whole  wealth  of  life  as 
the  determinate  satisfaction  of  its  Will. 

And  thus,  having  vindicated  the  conception  of  the  really 
Infinite,  we  are  free,  upon  the  basis  of  the  general  argument  of 
these  lectures,  to  assert  that  the  Absolute  is  no  absorber  and 
transmuter,  but  an  explicit  possessor  and  knower  of  an  infinite 
wealth  of  organized  individual  facts,  —  the  facts,  namely,  of 
the  Absolute  Life  and  Selfhood.  How  these  facts  are  One  and 
also  Many,  we  now  in  general  know,  precisely  in  so  far  as  we 


588  SUPPLEMENTARY  ESSAY 

reflectively  grasp  the  true  nature  of  Thought.  For  the  Other 
which  Thought  restlessly  seeks  is  simply  itself  in  individual 
expression,  —  or,  in  other  words,  its  own  purpose  in  a  deter- 
minate and  conscious  embodiment.  Since  this  embodiment  has 
to  assume  the  form  of  Selfhood,  its  detail  must  be  infinite. 
The  world  is  an  endless  Kette,  whatever  else  it  is.  Yet  this 
infinite  wealth  of  detail  is  not  opposed  to,  but  is  the  very 
expression  of  the  internal  meaning  of  the  purpose  to  be  and  to 
comprehend  the  Self.  The  infinite  wealth  is  determinate  be- 
cause it  fulfils  a  precisely  definable  purpose  in  an  unique  way, 
that  permits  no  other  to  take  its  place  as  the  embodiment  of 
the  Absolute  Will.  And  the  One  and  the  Many  are  so  recon- 
ciled, in  this  account,  that  the  Absolute  Self,  even  in  order  to 
be  a  Self  at  all,  has  to  express  itself  in  an  endless  series  of 
individual  acts,  so  that  it  is  explicitly  an  Individual  Whole 
of  Individual  Elements.  And  this  is  the  result  of  consider- 
ing Individuality,  and  consequently  Being,  as  above  all  an 
expression  of  Will,  and  of  a  Will  in  which  both  Thought  and 
Experience  reach  determinateness  of  expression. 


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